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The New Poland 



By 

Charles O. Cameron 



A Series of Articles Reprinted by Permission of 
The Detroit Journal (Copyright) 



Published by 

THE NATIONAL POLISH DEPARTMENT OF AMERICA 

2138 Pierce Avenue, Chicago, 111. 



■C3 



Copyright 1919 

ant 

kov is m 



JUL 21 .:• 



Poland's Historic Stand for Democracy 

and Liberty 

ANEW Great Power of Democracy is looming up on the war- 
scarred frontiers of the three fallen empires of Prussia, 
Russia and Austria. 
The new Great Power is Poland — a new government but an old 
nation, a kingdom-republic older in history than Prussia or Russia 
or Austria. 

Her old independent government was slowly crushed to death 
about 125 years ago by the conspiracies of the Hohenzollerns, the 
Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs. 

But though her government was crushed, though her elected 
kings were dethroned and her parliaments silenced, though heroic 
leaders were martyred or exiled, her people have never surrendered 
their individuality to the conquerors. Under the oppression of 
Czars and Kaisers the Poles have clung to their own language, their 
traditions of democracy, and to their undying hope that the day of 
deliverance would come. 

The day of deliverance has now come indeed, when the freemen 
of Poland will take their place among the republics of the world. 

The time came when the whole world was weary of Czars and 
Kaisers, just as Poland had long been weary of them. The time 
came when the world was prepared for the ideals of democracy for 
which ancient Poland stood, which her heroes died to maintain. 

And when the war finally brought deliverance to the captive 
(nation, the long-oppressed people were found prepared and ready 
| to assume the burden of self-government. They have been trained 
I in a school of liberty through a thousand years of glory, and 
;they have kept the faith of democracy through two centuries of 
'oppression. 

In one respect there is no story like this story, no history like 
jthe history of Poland. Everything in her past has a significance 
for the present and the future. Everything developing in the pres- 
ent readjustment in Europe is better understood by a study of 
Poland's past. 



Poland's historic stand 



For Poland is a land with an Interrupted History. During 
many generations she has been kept from the great state of Europe. 
Now she reappears, as if out of prison, to resume the noble role she 
maintained in mightier centuries, and to march among modern 
nations in the spirit of her ancient chivalry. 

The Old Land 
of Freemen 

THE hopes of future Poland rest in the spirit of the historic 
past. What we have witnessed in her is the carrying forward 
of principles of freedom which she sought in vain to work out 
in old ages of force and blood. 

The Poles were valiant in war, but never aggressors. They 
sought to work out principles of human happiness and increasing 
democracy, while Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns and Romanoffs 
and the dynasty of Sweden plotted restlessly for more empire. 

Poland was a nation traveling peaceably on her way, defending 
herself, defending Prussia and Austria and Russia and all Europe 
at times, but who finally fell among thieves and was despoiled. 

We shall see the thieves deprived of their booty, we shall see 
the defrauded nation rehabilitated. To know what this shall mean 
we must consider what the records of Poland's glory reveal. 

The first faint records of life in what is now Poland, and what 
is to be Poland, show a people dwelling in communities or cities, 
but each freeman in his own house. 

This individualism of the freemen is a striking feature of the 
oldest Polish life. Some of the Slavic peoples dwelt in community 
houses like vast tenements. The Pole always maintained his indi- 
vidual family life. 

This capacity for individualism continues to this day a marked 
trait of the Polish people. The Polish immigrant to America dwells 
each by himself. In many Polish rooming houses each roomer has 
his own account at the grocer. There never was in Polish history 
an effort by prince or king to crush out the individual life. 

The Poles developed a notion of individual liberty which jealous 
kings were able to crush by their armies of conscripts. Neverthe- 
less, these ideals are the ideals for which all democracies stand 
today. 



FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 



The sufferings of Poland at the hands of surrounding empires 
was not her fault. It was due to her ideals. Left to herself in 
the past, as she will be in the future, Poland would have developed 
a freedom and a culture to make the world marvel. Her sorrows 
and tribulations were due wholly to the constant conspiracies of 
Russian, Prussian, Saxon, Swedish and Austrian rulers to interfere 
with her internal liberties, and break her strength among the nations. 

Means Much to 
All Americans 

THE past sufferings and the future hopes of this splendid peo- 
ple mean much to all Americans. For we and the Poles, even 
the Poles in their own land under Russian or Teutonic oppres- 
sion, have common heroes. 

Their Thaddeus Kosciuszko, hero of the great revolt of the last 
decade of the eighteenth century. Kosciuszko, in whose honor a 
mound of earth was raised at Cracow from soils brought from every 
Polish battlefield, was the same Kosciuszko who served as an aide 
to Washington, and whom Washington described as "the ideal 
soldier of liberty." 

Their Count Casimir Pulaski, who fought in vain for Polish 
freedom in 1768, escaped to America to fight for the independence 
of the colonies, and after serving at Brandywine and on other fields, 
was mortally wounded in fighting at Savannah as a general in the 
American army. 

This Count Pulaski was the forerunner of many other Poles 
who have died for this republic. The Civil War had soldiers whose 
fathers fled from Austria in the thirties, and from Germany in 
1848, while many sons of the Great Migration of 1880 fought in the 
Spanish war and in this last war. 

So while we as American children read of Kosciuszko and 
Pulaski as of Lafayette, the Poles also read of these men in their 
European achievements. Everyone knows that Lafayette and 
Franklin have proved the great ties of union between America and 
France — these men are the common heroes of both republics. So 
it is with Kosciuszko and Pulaski. The Poles in remotest Poland 
know how these heroes loved America. 

Nor is this all. Niemcewicz, the beloved Polish patriotic his- 



Poland's historic stand 



torian, the biographer of Kosciuszko, wrote also for his own people 
a biography of Washington, whom he knew in America during our 
Revolution. So the name of our first President is enshrined in a 
Polish classic. The student of Polish history may read of Wash- 
ington as of Casimir the Great or John Sobieski. 

The Pole in remotest Poland thus looks upon the Americans as 
a people morally akin to him. We also can look upon these old 
champions of liberty as our own comrades and kinsmen in human- 
ity's long battle for freedom. It needs only a little consideration of 
the great achievements of the past to make us appreciate how the 
spirit of Old Poland and of New Poland is also the spirit of 
America. 



The Unrecorded 
Slavic Empires 

THE Slavic nations, including Russians, Poles, Bohemians, 
Ukrainians, Serbs, Bulgars, Slovenians, etc., seem once to have 
spread much farther into western Europe than they do today. 
In the days before recorded history there were great struggles and 
wars between the same Teutons and Slavs who have battled before 
our eyes during the past four years. 

The Slavs, in different groups, once held such well-known Teu- 
tonic cities as Berlin, Vienna, Jena, Leipzig. Potsdam is a Slavic 
name, so is Pomerania. But long before written history, long before 
the influence of missionaries brought regular records, the different 
Slavic peoples had taken some definite form. Some of the Slavic 
nations then in existence, like the Lusatians and the Polabish peo- 
ple, were later overwhelmed by Teutonic absorption, which sought 
in vain to absorb the Poles and Bohemians. 

So as early as the eighth and ninth centuries of the Christian era 
there are traces of a definite nationality in "the Plain" or "Pole," 
the vast rich level land spreading about the River Vistula. 

This national stock was divided into tribes, each with tribal gods 
and spirits, chiefly gods of the trees and harvests and the storm. 
Here is where the Poles and Poland emerge into history just at 
the same time that the successors of Charlemagne are laying the 
foundations of France and Germany and Italy, and while England 
is taking new unity under the kings of Wessex. 



FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 



Now even in that far past the character of the Pole was revealed. 
He was never an aggressive warrior. He was happy to let his 
neighbor pray to his own tribal gods, while he prays to his own. 
His society was based upon the freeman. Individual vengeance 
was provided in his law. 

Centuries later a Bohemian poet described the Slavs as "dove- 
blooded." Dove-blooded in a sense: peace-loving, home-loving, 
farm-loving, the Poles of that old time were. 

We can see the character of the old time Pole revealed in his 
descendant of today. He still is ready to fight for defense, for the 
liberty of Poland and other lands — yet how Poland has rejoiced in 
the coming of peace ! The Poles have never mingled in our more 
aggressive activities to the same extent as other nations, yet they 
gave the largest proportion of volunteers to the American army 
when democracy was to be saved. 

Ages of Battle 
Are Begun 

THE reader of Polish history will remain convinced of one 
thrilling fact. 

That is, that if the Poles had been left undisturbed on their 
acres, they might never have become warriors at all. Several times, 
when the Poles made war, they had previously been so peaceful that 
the battlefield saw them with no arms but scythes and other imple- 
ments of peace. 

It was outside attack that developed the great war record of 
Poland, outside attack and, the demand of her chivalry that she 
protect Christendom in many hours of peril. 

Today, as the shadowy lines of Great Poland again loom up in 
eastern Europe, many are asking, "What will be the spirit of this 
new Great Power?" There is a shadowy outline drawn of a great 
level land, enriched by many navigable rivers and crossed by old 
highways and modern railroads, a country of 110,000 square miles 
and 30,000,000 inhabitants. 

We shall then create another Great Power — will it be a great 
power for good or for evil ? Will it be a force for all humanity, or 
merely a selfish force ? 



6 Poland's historic stand 

The answer must be sought in the ancient history of Poland's 
greatness. 

Until the rise of the American republic there was no history 
like hers. It was a history of aggrandizement chiefly by peaceful 
annexation, by states seeking admission. But at all times her power 
was exerted to strike at tyrants, or to beat back invaders. 

She was not a conquering oppressor. In fact, for many weary 
centuries, while sheltered nations grew to power in entrenched 
Europe, Poland stood at the barrier of the east and spent her blood 
and strength holding the Tartar and the Turk from the western 
lands. 

If Poland in those dim ages could develop a character that won 
her the title of "The Knight Among Nations," what will she develop 
in a modern age of enlightenment and national honor? 

The real truth is that the old ideals of Poland were too fine and 
true for those bloody centuries. It required the moral strength of 
modern enlightenment to bring Poland to the place where she can 
work out her own noble traditions, and be appreciated by a modern 
world. 

Baptized 
in Fire 

THE greatest decision in the history of Poland was in her choice 
of a form of Christian faith. In the ninth century Russia, 
under St. Vladimir, embraced the Greek church. In the same 
century Emperor Otto the First, of the Holy Roman empire, was 
seen making war on all the lands round about. He hurled a body 
of Teutonic warriors against the pagan Poles, thus making the first 
clear record of the old, old strife between Slav and Teuton. 

Mieszko, or Mieczyslaw the First, was then leader of the Polish 
people. He was the leader in some ancient and Slavic sense, and 
the fruit of his leadership was to lead Poland into the western fam- 
ily of nations instead of the eastern. He was the first Polish king 
to accept the spreading Christian faith, and he accepted it from 
Roman Catholic missionaries. 

Thus a definite line of difference was drawn between the Rus- 
sian Vladimir at Kieff and the Polish Mieszko in his new capital at 
Gniezno. The decision made Poland western. It gave her national 



FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 



soul a western outlook. It brought up her individual citizens in 
touch with the active powers of Europe. 

The fruits of this were rich and everywhere abundant. Poland 
had a chain of great universities when Russia scarcely had schools. 
And Poland was a limited monarchy centuries ago, while Russia 
could not limit the Czar until she dethroned him. 

Mieszko felt the grim and ruthless power of the Emperor Otto 
and his Teutonic knights. So, though the Teutonic invaders were 
withdrawn after the pagan ruler embraced Christianity, Mieszko 
nevertheless bowed to the gigantic German power. He was there- 
fore given the title of Duke of Poland, the first of a series of Pol- 
ish rulers, dukes and kings, who will be succeeded in our day by 
presidents of Poland. 

Here appears one of the first great surprises of Polish history. 
Poland was first a formless and unorganized land of farmers pray- 
ing to local idols and spirits. 

Then, all at once, in the course of a few splendid years, she 
became organized into military departments, and into ecclesiastical 
dioceses. Suddenly she saw her dove-cote towns divided among 
feudal castellans or barons. Immigrant monks from France, Eng- 
land and Italy laid the foundations of a new agriculture. With the 
development of the country came an influx of German labor on the 
feudal estates, and German residents in the cities. Poland suddenly 
marched forward to a place of power among nations. 

This all had its effect when Poland's first great warrior king, 
Boleslaw the First, son of Mieszko the First, took the throne. He 
gained first the full inheritance of his father, then he fought to 
establish Poland among the powers. He pushed his arms triumph- 
antly to the conquest of Pomerania and the Baltic shore, swept far 
into Russia, and temporarily gained Bohemia. 

These wars were fought nearly 1,000 years ago, yet they were 
the wars of a free people against Kaiserism, and against German 
Kaisers or Emperors. This recent war has brought the western 
world very late into conflict with the two ancient enemies of Poland, 
Germany and Turkey. Many of the old battles of the tenth and 
eleventh centuries had war-notes which might have been sounded 
anywhere from Belgium to Mesopotamia during the past four years. 

Boleslaw the First was offered an early alliance with Germany, 
as a subordinate king. This was in the year 1000. His answer 



8 Poland's historic stand 



was a strangely typical instance of Polish independence. Boleslaw 
---did not take the title from the hand of the German Kaiser of that 
Holy Roman Empire. But 24 years later he called the princes and 
prelates together at Gniezno, and there was crowned king by his 
own decree. Thereafter he refused to acknowledge any subordinate 
duty to the Emperors. 

The Sad Free 
Kingdom 

THE self-crowning of Boleslaw was typical of the Pol- 
ish spirit, even in the face of many perils. There was in this 
a strange, unbelievable daring. The Polish country, an open 
land, was surrounded by enemies, Teutonic and Slavic. It was 
exposed to the advancing, threatening rush of Tartar tribes from 
the eastern steppes. Amalgamation with the Holy Roman Empire 
might seem a natural preservative policy. 

But it was part of Poland's destiny always to cling to her own 
—individuality, and she did this from the tenth century to the twen- 
tieth. 

Later articles in this series will set forth some of the later great 
events in the advancing history of Poland. What Americans should 
understand and appreciate, what thoughtful students of history the 
world over must appreciate, is the noble and steadfast spirit that 
governs that history. We come to appreciate that Poland, even 
when her institutions appeared ancient, had a spirit of freedom 
which we are proud to call modern. 

Boleslaw was indeed more of the type of conqueror than most 
Polish kings. But that was in the first century of his nation's 
emergence from barbarism. The later heroes of Poland are often 
found sword in hand, but it is a defensive sword. 

The spirit of her patriotism is that of a nation often bruised by 
ruffian empires, stricken to the earth in wars of alien conquest, but 
rising with the patient defiance of her patriotic hymn, "Poland Is 
Not Yet Lost." 

The moral grandeur of her old ideals can be seen in her early 
traditions. The legends of many nations trace their kings to de- 
scent from the sun or the gods. The Polish tradition was more 
like a story out of the Scriptures. The legend was that the first 



FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 9 



king, Piast, when a poor man, entertained two strangers one night 
in his peasant cottage. In the morning it was revealed that his 
visitors were angels, and that for his hospitality he was to be 
crowned the ruler of the land. The dynasty was founded not in a 
boasted record of blood, but in a tradition of benevolence. Nothing 
in Polish history is so illustrative of the Polish temperament as this 
old legend. Only a people of great worth can produce a fiction of 
noble action. 

The story of Piast the Peasant is really like an allegory of all 
Poland's story. Poland has never been a rich nation, but she has 
been noble and generous and brave. Great misfortunes were hers 
after the reign of Boleslaw. Divisions split the kingdom, internal 
strife distressed the people, Tartar hordes swept through Russia 
into Poland, and Poland in her suffering held them back from 
countries further west. 

In the midst of these sorrows outside interference in Poland's 
internal affairs never ceased, nor did it end until the last partition 
of the country. In the eleventh century it took the efforts of a 
series of kings to secure the rights of succession to the throne to 
the eldest son. The old Polish ducal law had been that every patri- 
mony must be divided. Neighboring powers wanted this law kept 
by the princes so that Poland's kings would always divide the 
country, and thus the land would steadily diminish into smaller and 
smaller portions. 

However, Casimir the Great succeeded finally in establishing a 
regular succession, an undivided inheritance. 

When he had done this, it could have been noted that all the 
distresses of the country had not halted the general advance of the 
people toward liberty. 

The Polish liberty of those early centuries was not like ours in 
statute. But it was strangely like our liberty in its spirit. One of 
the reasons, possibly, why Poland has always attracted Americans, 
and America is so dear a name to the Poles, is this likeness of spirit. 

Early Polish life, like early American life, included provision 
for slaves. But there was a steady approximation to greater liberty. 
And the honored heroes of Poland are not slave-makers like Wil- 
liam the Conqueror, but rather liberators of serfs, like Kosciuszko. 
Thus America honors Abraham Lincoln more than Cortez. 



10 Poland's historic stand 

The best study of Poland's real policy of liberty, her early doc- 
trine of "self determination," is found by leaving Boleslaw and the 
beginnings of her greatness, and advancing to the period in the 
fifteen and sixteenth centuries, when Poland became the largest 
state in Europe. 

After the Tartar invasion had been swept away, Conrad of 
Poland forgot the early dangers from the German arms, and him- 
self invited the German Knights of the Cross to settle in his domin- 
ions. The avowed task of these knights, who settled on the coasts 
of the Baltic, was partly helping to convert the pagan Lettish 
tribes. But the knightly forces grew into an aggressive temporal 
organization. 

The Polish dukes showed no advanced fear of the Teutonic 
knights, until all at once these swordsmen rushed out of their as- 
signed territories and battled successfully to wrest from Poland 
sections of the present East and West Prussia. 

They then struck to the south. But by this time Wladislaw, 
king of Poland, had re-united his forces and the divided country, 
and was able to defeat them and drive them back. 

Casimir the 
Great 

WLADISLAW died in 1332. Then arose his son, Casimir 
the Great, who overwhelmed the plans of the Teutonic 
Knights completely. For 37 years he labored to consoli- 
date the Polish state. 

He left her strong and united, able to laugh at German plots and 
intrigue, and ready for her great territorial era. 

Casimir the Great was the only Polish monarch who was called 
"the Great," and this because he built cities of marble in place of 
huts of wood or rushes. Lie left no son, so the throne went to his 
son-in-law, Louis of Hungary. His daughter, St. Hedwig, suc- 
ceeded Louis on the throne. In 1386 the queen married Jagellon 
of Lithuania, and founded a new dynasty in Poland. 

This union of Lithuania and Poland, made more and more com- 
plete and solid during two centuries, has always been a proud inci- 
dent in the history of Poland. 



FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 11 

The Poles are proud of their Lithuanian writers, such as Mic- 
kiewicz and Si^nkiewicz^and of the patriotic (L ithuanian) Kosciuszko. 
They are proud that they were able to effect a union with a nation 
speaking a separate language and worshiping in a different church. 
/To this day in America it is common to see the arms of Lithuania 
and the arms of Poland both emblazoned over a Polish church or 
place of assembly./ 

But recent debates between these old allies show how near to 
the present time are these events of the past. There is a strong 
movement in Lithuania for complete independence of Poland un- 
der the peace treaty. Lithuanians are found demanding "absolute 
self-determination." 

Now, though the Poles would like to have as large a country as 
possible, it is expected that they will not in any way contest the 
right of Lithuania to form her own republic, if she wishes. The 
self-determination of small nations, the freedom of union on the 
part of separate nationalities, is treasured by the Poles today as it 
was by St. Hedwig. 

It required two centuries and many conventions to cement the 
union between Poland and Lithuania. But in the meantime there 
had been other accretions to the Polish territory — West Prussia, 
Pomerania, Livonia, Courland. 

In each of these cases there was no war of conquest, but a vol- 
untary application by the affected states for a union with the Polish 
state. Family connections made possible temporary unions be- 
tween Poland and Hungary, but none of these continued. 

No state, until America arose, ever grew so great without armed 
conquest as Poland became. She arose to this dignity and strength 
in the teeth of opposition and envy, without meddling with other 
nations, and by the pure force of her own popular ideas. And her 
kings ruled over different nationalities and different languages by 
the force of moral authority. It is true that in the next few cen- 
turies feuds among the nobles developed, aided by the conspiracies 
of meddling outside monarchs. But Poland in her most glorious 
period ruled by the voluntary co-operation of all her citizens. 



12 Poland's historic stand 

Heritages of 
Freedom 

THE present day Pole or Polish-American knows these things, 
though they are strange to Americans. The Polish soldier, 
whether fighting in France, or in Russia, or in any other coun- 
try, has not been fighting for "liberty" of any vague or hazy sort. 
He has not been fighting for liberty for himself or his own nation 
alone. 

He has been fighting for the long-submerged but still vitalized 
ideals of the old Polish freedom, singularly like the doctrines laid 
down by the Wilsons, and the Lloyd Georges, and the Clemenceaus 
of the present day. 

The current newspapers have printed a report from Poland 
which throws a fascinating sidelight on the ancient Polish liberties. 
A Jewish leader in Poland has declared that the Jews will ask there 
for autonomy in their own communities and for separate courts. 

It might seem a startling thing for representatives of one reli- 
gion to ask autonomy and separate courts. 

But the fact is that in the old days of Polish liberty, Jewish cit- 
izens did have separate autonomous districts and separate courts. 
These demands of one section of the present population of Poland 
fall within the liberal limits of the old Polish constitution. 

Thus in many ways it can be seen that the Polish people, now 
about to resume their own self-government, are fortified by the 
noblest traditions and principles of human liberty. They are en- 
tering on no new experiment, like a Russian republic or a Turkish 
limited monarchy. The oppression the Poles have suffered has been 
foreign, the liberty they hope to enjoy has always been their own. 

The nation the United States has helped to set free is a nation 
whose sons helped to set us free. It is a nation which had devel- 
oped doctrines of freedom before the Mayflower landed at 
Plymouth, before the founding of Jamestown. 

So the American nation, or any other liberty-loving people, can 
be sure that the spirit of the old Polish heroes of freedom still rules. 
There are thousands of glorious proofs of this enduring spirit, and 
some of its manifestations will be shown in later articles. 



FOR DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 13 



Whether any particular clause of the old Polish order is 
adopted, such as the local autonomy of religious communities, is 
yet to be decided. 

But it is clear that the spirit of religious liberty, of personal 
liberty, of social and individual justice, as caught from the inspira- 
tion of the past, and as taught by the example of present day 
thriving democracies, will rule throughout the new dominion of the 
free Polish people. 



Polish Undying Passion for Liberty Shown in 
Modern and Ancient Heroism 

FREE Poland will very soon assume her place in the world's 
great sisterhood of republics. 

The future success of the statesmen and people of Free 
Poland is of vital interest and vital importance to all Americans, 
and to all the free peoples of the world. 

Humanity itself is at stake in the success of all the oppressed 
democracies which have been freed by the downfall of autocracy. 
For unless these young republics stand firm, holding fast their 
popular liberties, the war will seem to have been waged in vain. 

But we have two grand assurances that Free Poland will stand 
the test, and will prove worthy of a high place in the council of 
free nations. 

One great assurance is in the Past, in the mighty history of Old 
Poland's wars for freedom, which she fought until her very life- 
blood was drained for the cause of liberty. 

The second great assurance is in the Present, in the heroic rec- 
ord of Polish troops battling for democracy on every front in the 
Great War. These showed their clear inheritance of the old liberty- 
loving blood of Poland. 

How the Sons 
Proved Worthy 

THE sorrows and sufferings of Poland during the past two 
centuries drove many of her sons into exile in far-away lands. 
But when the trumpets blew for the Great War there was 
thrilling unanimity among the sons of those exiles, who arose in 
England, France, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and other 
countries and rushed to the standards of Democracy. 

In our own country hundreds of thousands of Polish descent 
enrolled under the American flag. In addition, there were thou- 
sands of Poles not citizens, or born in enemy countries, or outside 
the American enlistment ages, who enrolled here in the Polish army 
for service in France. 



16 POLISH UNDYING PASSION FOR LIBERTY 



Just as Thaddeus Kosciuszko crossed the wide ocean to fight 
for the liberty of America, so these Poles crossed the ocean again 
to fight for freedom in France. And the records of the war shine 
with testimony that the spirit of Kosciuszko's soldiers is as imper- 
ishable as their love of liberty. 

Our American cities recently saw a group of 13 soldiers, in the 
blue of the Polish army, whose very presence bore testimony to 
the unquenchable Polish spirit. These were 12 soldiers of the Pol- 
ish army, every one of whom had volunteered from America. Their 
leader was the French-born son of a Polish father and a French 
mother. 

The leader, still in his early twenties, was scarred with 23 
wounds. He had received 22 wounds, and his breast was ablaze 
with decorations, when he hurried back to the front, and his leg 
was carried away by a cannon ball. He cried, in his native French 
and in the spirit of his ancestral country, "Vive la Pologne!" or 
"Long live Poland," as he fell unconscious on the roaring field. 

Such was the leader. And what of his 12 companions, who 
came from this country which is so fond of peace? Every one of 
those young men had at least the Croix de Guerre, for distinguished 
valor on the field. Every one had been wounded. And every one, 
while rejoicing in the advent of peace, rejoiced also that he had had 
his part in the great work. 

The Undying 
Aspiration 

WHAT was the reason for this? The reason furnishes our 
second great assurance that Free Poland will deserve her 
place among the world's democracies. That reason is found 
in Poland's past, in her long, long war for democracy and civiliza- 
tion, the war of a thousand years. 

These young men were the sons of Polish exiles. The grand- 
father of one of them had fallen in a Polish revolt in 1863. An- 
other traced a proud descent to a hero of Kosciuszko's army of 
peasants. 

Whether born in America or in France, in England or Australia, 
the sons of Polish freemen are all born to the same passion for 
liberty. They are never warlike, never aggressive, they seldom are 



SHOWN IN MODERN AND ANCIENT HEROISM 17 

found among professional soldiers or students at military acade- 
mies, yet none of all the free peoples will fight more bravely for a 
cause of justice than these pacific men. 

We all know the future of the Polish people is vital to our 
American liberties, and to all human liberties. But in the same 
way the past history of this people is charged with significance for 
our history. 

This was never appreciated until the Great War revealed the 
manifold meaning of that history. 

This Great War has thrillingly awakened every American to 
realize that the history of every nation is really part of our own. 
Poland, remote among her plains and rivers, with her grandest work 
achieved before America became a nation, could have given us from 
her bleeding past some tremendous warnings of the Teutonic peril, 
long before we saw that peril in drowned ships, and in notes an- 
nouncing ruthless war. 

What Poland 
Could Have Told 

THE Great War itself was a baffling, maddening mystery to 
peaceable Americans who had studied only the history of 
Anglo-Saxon and Latin countries. These countries did not 
know what Poland could tell of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern ambi- 
tions, Hohenzollern and Hapsburg plots against free and peaceful 
peoples. 

The neglected history of Poland could have served as a book 
of lurid prophecy to warn all free peoples of the menace to human 
liberty in Berlin and Vienna. 

The neglected history of Poland, the unheard outcries of her 
agonized inhabitants, should have warned the whole world of the 
later "f rightfulness" and "ruthlessness" in Belgium. For all that 
Belgium has learned in four years Poland has known for more than 
a century. And the "mad imperial ambition" of Wilhelm II, so 
astounding to western Europe, must seem a familiar tale to Polish 
school children who know how their noble republic was torn 
asunder by the plots of Frederick the Great. 



18 POLISH UNDYING PASSION FOR LIBERTY 

How Poland 
Saved Europe 

POLAND can no longer count her burned cities and her mar- 
tyred citizens in these many years of oppression. And even 
in this past war, while the sufferings of Belgium were made 
known to all humanity through open English cables, the agonies 
of Poland under German rule or German invasion were veiled by 
intervening battlefields, and hushed into silence by the roar of the 
two war fronts. 

The sufferings of Poland, the universal death of little children, 
starving of sick men and women, depopulation of cities, went on 
far from the sight of our sympathetic eyes, hidden by the smoke 
and flame of a burning world. 

How terrible must have been Poland's sufferings in this war 
was shown when Paderewski declared : 

"No children under ten are left alive in the Polish war zone ! 

"There are now no classes left in Poland. There is now only 
one class, the poor." 

But though Poland has had greater suffering than most nations 
in this war and before this war, her people have doubtless rejoiced 
more than others in the greatness of the world's deliverance. 
Americans of Polish blood, exiles and sons and grandsons of exiles, 
have sorrowed deeply but have deeply rejoiced. 

For this same neglected history of Poland, which could have 
warned the world of the Teutonic peril, of ruthlessness and fright- 
fulness, could also have assured the world by past triumphs of the 
eventual victory of democracy. 

Poland, the beautiful, imperishable Democracy, could point to 
a score of grassgrown battlefields, and say : 

"Here is another place where my brave sons rallied from their 
peaceful occupations, and fought for democracy, and won, when 
perhaps the peoples of western Europe never dreamed that the 
liberty of all minkind was in danger!" 



SHOWN IN MODERN AND ANCIENT HEROISM 19 



The Knight 
Among Nations 

LOOKING upon this now-unveiled Polish history, looking on 
it as Polish children have looked upon it for so long, we see 
for the first time the lessons which have inspired the Polish 
heroes of the Great War. We realize, with humility and with great 
gratitude to the dead, that we have entered the stage in a later act 
in a very old drama, which had great scenes of battle before Amer- 
ica was first disclosed to the eyes of Columbus. 

We rejoice that the world is delivered from Kaiserism in 1918. 
This helps us to appreciate how Poland delivered the world from 
Kaiserism and Teutonism in former centuries. 

By a strange act of laggard world- justice, Poland is delivered 
from German captivity by the very western nations which she saved 
from German captivity in the years when Poland was a great power. 
Those were the ages when Poland was the Knight Among Nations, 
the chivalrous deliverer and protector of all. 

Gruenwald, 
Tannenberg 

POLAND'S first great struggle with Kaiserism was a struggle 
with the Hohenstaufen kings of Germany, who usually became 
also Emperors or Kaisers of the Holy Roman Empire. Re* 
peatedly these German Kaisers of that age sought to compel Poland 
to obedience as a vassal state, because they saw beyond Poland the 
vast steppes of submissive Russia, which in 1318 and in 1918 were 
alluring realms for land-greedy Germanic rulers. 

Boleslaw III met the issue in battle at Breslau with Kaiser 
Henry V, and routed him and his hosts. A century later the great- 
est of the Hohenstaufens, Frederick Barbarossa, marched into 
Poland, but his expedition was ruined by the craft and skill of 
Boleslaw IV. The German Kaiserism was temporarily repulsed, 
but the Teutonic Knights began to show a new menace, the infant 
but furious menace of Prussianism. 

The citation of old history might be wearisome if it were not 
for the intimate family connection with the most recent world ■ 
events. 



20 POLISH UNDYING PASSION FOR LIBERTY 



The Teutonic Knights were at first an order of knightly mis- 
sionaries, invited into the Polish regions on the Baltic to convert 
the pagan Letts. They soon ceased missionary activity and built 
up a powerful armed state, which grew in the course of later cen- 
turies into the kingdom of Prussia. 

But if it had not been for Poland's faithfulness to civilization in 
her days of might, this Prussian state would have been a great 
power centuries before Frederick the Great, and long before Europe 
was able to withstand her. 

The chivalry of the Knight Among Nations was the only force 
that could meet the menace of the Teutonic Knights. This is what 
saved Europe from the earlier Prussianization. The struggle was 
one which the world never could have appreciated until the vast 
Prussianizing schemes of the present century were revealed to an 
outraged world. 

At one time, while the Teutonic Knights were gaining more and 
more territory in the Polish dominions, it looked as if Poland was 
doomed to be Germanized. Teutonic immigration was enormous. 
Agents, spies, intriguers, plotters, Germanizers all, were every- 
where. Wladislaw Lokietek nevertheless rallied the Polish people 
to give the Teutonic Knights a great check. However, Casimir the 
Great, working to unify the Polish people within, made territorial 
concessions to the Teutonic Knights. 

Wladislaw Lokietek made an alliance with Lithuania against the 
Knights. The Teutons strove to divide and break this alliance, 
as they are even today striving to break Lithuania and Poland apart. 
But all the Teuton conspiracies of that day failed, the two lands 
merged into a dual alliance, and at Tannenberg in 1410 they broke 
the power of the Teutonic Knights in one terrific battle. 

Poland and Lithuania were saved. Europe was saved. Western 
Europe did not realize until 1914 the degree of its deliverance. But 
a debt was incurred which shall never be fully paid until Poland 
has enjoyed centuries of her new liberty which Tannenberg made 
possible. 



Poland's Ten Centuries of Democracy Ended 
by Plots of Czars and Kaisers 

IGNACE JAN PADEREWSKI, the Polish master musician 
whom the war has revealed as an eloquent leader of the best 

thought of Free Poland, made an illuminating declaration before 
the All Poland convention held in Detroit last August : 

"It is superfluous to explain to Poles the principles and ideals 
of America. They know these principles well, for they have been 
following them for one thousand years I" 

This revelation of the strength of ancient liberties in the Polish 
Constitution should be understood in the light of a famous prophecy 
by the Polish author Buszczynski : 

"The role of the Poles among the free peoples of the earth has 
been interrupted — but not ended I" 

The living descendants of Polish freemen today know that in 
former centuries their kingdom-republic was a leader of liberty. 
They know that the old passion for liberty has never died, even 
through many generations of oppression. 

Therefore the world can be assured that the New Poland of the 
future will not merely be democratic, but will take her place as an 
advanced leader of democracy. Free Poland will lead the nations 
of the future, as she led them in the past, in the great march of 
world-wide liberty. 

The Ancient 
Constitution 

THIS is no mere national dream. The people of Poland itself, 
or the American descendants of Polish heroes, can be as cer- 
tain of the future policy of the Polish Republic as Americans 
can be of the continued liberty of our own beloved land. 

For when Poland lost her liberty, she did not lose her soul. She 
did not lose her patriots, her statesmen, her thinkers. Her sons 
have continued to study, earnestly and zealously, the shining pages 
of her past history. 



22 Poland's ten centuries of democracy 

They have studied that history while in prison in Siberia, while 
in refuge homes in Switzerland or Britain, while fighting in armies 
of liberty in all corners of the world. And when Poland's own 
statesmen again take their seats in a free parliament to frame the 
fundamental law of their country, they will have the illumination 
shed by that past history, and by the work of all the statesmen 
since the last partition. 

The sons of Poland have worked on this task for all the 130 
years since independence was lost. They have felt sure that in 
time Providence would restore their despoiled lands. They wished 
to see their people prepared for that day of great rejoicing. They 
wished to see Poland ready to assume a foremost place among 
peoples wholly free. 

The time has about come. And when the democracies of the 
world at their peace table restore Poland to her place, she will enter 
the sisterhood of republics with clear vision and with a prepared 
national conscience. 

The Past and 
the Future 

THIS is what explains the known devotion of the Polish citizen 
to Polish history. He reads these records to keep his own 
heart true to the spirit of his ancestors. 

He would not follow the letter of ancient regulations, any more 
than modern Americans would adopt the first Constitution of the 
United States, without its amendments. But he will keep the free 
spirit of the old times, just as we rejoice to. maintain the spirit of 
the Continental Congress. 

This is the inspiration of Polish history to all of Polish blood. 
This is what makes the Pole in America so ready as a disciple of 
Americanism, so valuable as an addition to our democracy. This 
is why men of Polish blood will fight for this country as the ol(J 
peasants of the Vistula fought for their farms. 



ENDED BY PLOTS OF CZARS AND KAISERS 23 

Treasured 
Inheritances 

F | iHE old records of the kingdom-republic of Poland have their 
j[^ priceless documents, their sacred pages. 

Some of these are as precious as the parchments of Magna 
Charta in the history of Anglo-Saxon liberty. 

Magna Charta, signed by King John at Runnymede in 1215, 
belonged to the old age of feudalism. But it contained the death- 
less seed of liberty, the seed of all the liberty we now possess. Some 
of these old statutes of Poland are likewise feudal, but they contain 
the great principles of human justice. 

These old statutes likewise proved their power. There never 
was in Poland such an era of autocracy as England saw under 
Henry VIII, France under Louis XIV, or Germany under the Ho- 
henzollern Kaisers. 

As far back as 1180, in the reign of Casimir the Just of Poland, 
nine years before Richard Lion Heart had succeeded Henry II as 
King of England, a council was held at Lenczyca. This Polish 
council was called to impose restrictions on the power of the 
monarch. 

In England, King Henry reigned, then Richard Lion Heart 
became king, then King John was crowned, and it was not until 
1215, thirty-five years after the council in Lenczyca, that the king 
of England accepted the restrictions on his power laid down in 
Magna Charta. 

That same Polish council was the germ of the later Polish sen- 
ate. It has long been honored in Polish history, because it laid 
down the principle that every freeman should have "full right of 
person and possession. " The rights of freemen are also a golden 
section in the English Magna Charta. 



The Broader 

Freedom ;: ;~-"l !f ' r ■''•' : ^ffe 

N 1331 King Wladislaw Lokietek, famous for his alliance with 
Lithuania and his battles against the Teutonic Knights, called a 
council in Checiny. 

It had not been unusual for the king to call conferences of 



24 Poland's ten centuries of democracy 

higher nobles and clergy. But Wladislaw called in all the holders 
of land, and made them a part of his council. He did not go so far 
as a modern representative government, but he went far ahead of 
the thought of his time. In those early centuries the nobility, great- 
er and lesser, were taken as the representatives of the whole people. 
So the first Diet of Checiny was intended as representative gov- 
ernment. 

Let enough history be cited to show the continuing spirit of the 
Polish state. We can understand better why that history of an old 
kingdom is still inspiring, even to men and women of Polish descent 
born in republican America or republican France or democratic 
Britain. 

Seventy years before Columbus sailed to the discovery of Amer- 
ica, the nobles imposed a new limitation on the sovereign. The 
property of nobles was recognized as inviolate. And the nobles in 
Poland were not a small and limited class, but a large representative 
body including one-eighth of the entire population. 

The law of inviolable property is called the "Czerwinsk privi- 
lege." Eight years afterward a law was passed to restrict the power 
of the crown to make arrests. This law declared that "No one 
shall be imprisoned unless condemned by law," that is, without a 
legal warrant. This is regarded as the Polish version of the great 
legal principle of the Habeas Corpus act. The Poles also worked 
out their own version of the English saying, "A man's house is his 
castle." 

The freedom of Poland grew steadily, like the liberty of Eng- 
land. Each century was fuller of liberty than the last. Some stu- 
dents of history in past years shook their heads over the freedom 
of Poland. They declared that if Poland had not been so free, if 
the kings had been autocrats, Poland would not have been dismem- 
bered. 

But today we know that it was better for Poland to love free- 
dom. If her people had not been inspired to love liberty, they could 
not have kept their national hopes alive and aflame through these 
years of oppression. And Poland is now fit for freedom, prepared 
to join the free democracies of the world, because of the foundations 
laid in the old ages. 



ENDED BY PLOTS OF CZARS AND KAISERS 25 

Election of 
Kings 

THE security of British liberty under her kings is due to the 
principle that the king reigns by the will of Parliament. It is 
said of the English king or queen that he "reigns but does not 
rule." Centuries ago this very thing was said of the king of Poland, 
in the Latin of the time: "Regnat, sed non imperat." And cen- 
turies ago it was an established principle in Poland that the king 
ruled by the will of the people, expressed by the voting nobles, and 
not by mere hereditary succession. 

The crown did go from father to son when the son seemed 
worthy. But the Polish nobles with great freedom turned aside 
from family to family. They even went abroad, to Hungary, to 
France, for kings or queens. Some of the greatest of the Polish 
kings, like King John Sobieski and King Stanislaw Leszczynski, 
were born as nobles, and were elected to the kingship. In three 
generations the Poniatowski family rose from the rank of gentry to 
that of senator and then to royalty. 

In later centuries of Polish history the elections were doubtful 
contests whose outcome none could predict. The enemies of Poland, 
writing in autocratic countries, have condemned this lack of cer- 
tainty. But to a modern democracy, or to a modern Pole planning 
the future democracy of his country, these old records are full of 
inspiration. 

In one election, several centuries ago, 200,000 nobles voted on 
the kingship. In 1848, in the French republic, the qualifications of 
voters were so restricted that there were fewer actual ballots for 
president than the Polish kingdom-republic had seen cast for the 
royal office. 

The Meaning 
of History 

THESE old records of fact from the statute books of the past 
are full of living significance for all free nations. 

We know that no country in the eighteenth century was as 
free as the democracies of the twentieth. But we know that in 
the eighteenth century and long before, Poland was one of the 




26 Poland's ten centuries of democracy 



freest lands on earth. We know that if the Poles had been left to 
themselves, they would have worked out the same great principles 
of freedom in which we rejoice. 

1791, 1831, 
1863 and 1918 

| OR every Polish movement for liberty has been established on 
a firmer and broader foundation. The liberty movement in 
Poland has always been dreaded by neighboring autocrats. 
This is natural. As far back as 1610, before the Romanoffs ascended 
the throne of Russia, Polish thinkers inspired a movement for free- 
dom which led to the calling of a double Duma. In our own gen- 
eration we saw revived in Petrograd what the Poles had inspired 
in 1610 in Moscow. 

The fact in Polish history hardest to understand is that the very 
liberties of the people were used by her autocratic enemies to destroy 
her. 

The election of kings made the nobles and gentry all-powerful, 
so the Hohenzollerns, Hapsburgs and Romanoffs worked forever to 
create factions and to increase distress. 

When the nobles themselves undertook measures to limit their 
own powers, to establish some definite dynasty to contend with for- 
eign kings, to give further liberties to the people, the surrounding 
autocrats hastened their partitions, hastened to despoil, lo ruin, to 
obliterate Poland, that they might obliterate democracy. 

This is what the poet Campbell means when he exclaims that 
"Freedom shrieked when Kosciuszko fell !" For in the Great Diet 
held by the Poles from 1788 to 1792, just before the Second Par- 
tition, Poland, though already suffering from the First Partition, 
adopted a Constitution inspired by freedom. 

There is nothing in history more glorious or more tragic than 
the framing of this Constitution by a free people on the verge of 
doom. This charter abolished the serfdom of the peasants. This 
convention of nobles limited the privileges of the nobles. The right 
of any member of the nobility to oppose and kill a measure was 
taken away. A modern government, which Rousseau declared to 
be freer than that of England, was about to be established, with 



ENDED BY PLOTS OF CZARS AND KAISERS 27 

the kings and nobles assisting, and the people at the very threshold 
of liberty. 

Then came the answering blow from the Hohenzollerns and 
Romanoffs, the Second Partition of Poland of 1793. Only a frag- 
ment of Poland was left, to be partitioned again between Russia, 
Prussia and Austria in 1795. And in this Second Partition Russia 
imposed laws on the fragment of Poland, which showed the real 
meaning of the quarrel. The Empress Catherine insisted that serf- 
dom be restored. She insisted on all the old disturbing powers 
being reserved to the nobility. She opposed the establishment of 
regular dynasty. 

The poet Campbell understood. Poland was butchered to destroy 
democracy. She was butchered to maintain serfdom, which was 
not abolished in most German countries for many years afterward, 
and lasted in Russia until 1863. 

Poland was the free nation, crucified for human liberty in 1791, 
in 1831, in 1863. Had she been an autocracy, had her Diet not 
sought to free the serfs, had she not made the cause of human 
liberty her cause, there might still be kings in Poland. The auto- 
crats of those days complained of the anarchy of Poland. Those 
same tyrants hissed what they called the "anarchy" of Jefferson 
and Washington in the American continent. They loved the old 
ways, for we remember that it was a German prince who sold 
Hessian troops to fight against American liberty upon this soil. This 
was the type of tyranny that struck at freedom wherever it appeared, 
on the banks of the Vistula or on the shores of New England. 

These facts from the far past explain why the Pole of today, 
the American of Polish descent of today, finds inspiration and con- 
fidence in the history of the lost kingdom-republic. 

No one can read understandingly the story of Polish liberty, and 
the story of how that liberty was lost, without sharing the enthusi- 
asm of the Pole for the past of his people, and also sharing his 
proud confidence in the greatness and freedom of her future. 



Greatness of the Future Poland Proved By 
Great Men of the Past 

THE world which will set Poland free will confer only justice 
on the long-oppressed nation. It will confer more than jus- 
tice on the world, in the benefits which a Free Poland will 
be able to confer upon all humanity. 

The loss of Poland's ancient liberty was a blighting blow to 
civilization. The tyranny of Romanoffs and Hapsburgs and Hohen- 
zollerns repressed the free expression of Polish culture. The trio 
of tyrannical dynasties sought to deprive humanity of the great 
services which might be given by Polish culture. 

But, though shackled and suffering, with the Russian tyrants 
striving to crush out national feeling and the German oppressors 
laboring to silence the ancient language, there has nevertheless been 
no end to literary and artistic life. 

There has never been a time when students, if permitted, did 
not crowd to her ancient universities. 

The presses of Poland, which began to operate within a few 
years after the first invention of the printing press, have never 
ceased to pour forth Polish productions. Often operating secretly, 
often operating with the publishers in imminent peril of exile or 
death, the presses of Poland have supplied the unarmed hosts of 
Polish freedom with the ammunition of thought which kept up the 
ceaseless silent battle for liberty. 

In Cracow, during the past half century, a remarkable special 
edition of the great Polish classics has been issued, for distribution 
among the poorer people. 

For even among the poorer people the great writers of the past 
are valued and loved. The foreign tyrants have uniformly re- 
pressed real Polish education, and in many districts have provided 
no education at all. But even in the darkest provinces the poets 
and orators of the old time are read by all who read, and their 
songs are known to thousands whom the alien oppressors have 
barred from education. 



30 GREATXESS OF THE FUTURE POLAXD 

The Castle of 
Sienkiewicz 



T 



HE Polish people showed within our own time what a burn- 
ing appreciation they have for what is great in literature and 
art. 



Henryk Sienkiewicz, the novelist, is best known to Americans 
as the author of "Quo Vadis?". To Polish readers this is one of 
his minor works, which reveals only glimpses of the tremendous 
power of his Polish historical novels, "Pan Michael," "The Deluge," 
and "With Fire and Sword." 

The American public bought and read "Quo Yadis?". They 
watched it in plays and in moving pictures. Many of them went 
on from this one novel to read the other novels by this author, and 
thereby to get some vision of the old chivalry of classic Poland. 

But the Poles did more than merely read the works of their glori- 
ous author. A few years after the appearance of "Quo Vadis?" in 
English, the novelist was presented with a castle and estate, the gift 
of the Polish race. 

The Poles have no king to name a poet laureate, they have no 
president to confer decorations of honor. But the whole people 
could show that they loved a great representative of the national 
soul. They could give him a gift of honor such as no novelist or 
poet ever before received from the spontaneous acclaim of a people. 

But Sienkiewicz lived to prove that he was not a merely literary 
patriot. His patriotism was in his heart. When the war burst forth 
he went forth from his home, ruined by the war, ruined in fortune 
but still rich in Polish spirit. He went into active service as presi- 
dent of the Polish International Relief commission in Switzerland. 
From this center he kept in touch with all the world-wide Polish 
movement. 

He died in Switzerland, died in poverty, died in exile, died be- 
fore the clouds of darkness were lifted from the world. But before 
he died he proved that he appreciated his own people as fully as 
they appreciated him. The high international fame which he had 
won had made no change in the simplicity of his Polish-Lithuanian 
heart. 



PROVED BY GEEAT MEN OF THE PAST 31 

The Leadership 
of Art 



T 



HE Polish people at the present hour have shown supreme 
confidence in the character of their race, and a singular 
knowledge of their own national soul. 



One striking example before our very eyes is the leadership of 
Ignace Jan Paderewski in many of their new national movements. 

No other nation would have chosen a professional musician to 
be its diplomatic representative in the United States during a period 
when its own independence was being established. Some would 
have feared the very eminence of Paderewski as a pianist and com- 
poser would have made him less able to manage the hard affairs of 
a newly forming state. 

But the Poles knew Paderewski as the world did not. The Poles 
are a musical nation. Even Polish factory workers in this country, 
new immigrants from the Vistula, form orchestras to play classical 
music. Therefore a musician might be more than a musician. 

The Poles knew that Paderewski could not be the musical leader 
of Poland, as he was, unless he profoundly understood the whole 
genius of his people. 

And therefore, when he spoke for Poland, the outside world 
was amazed to find that this musician was one of the foremost 
scholars in the world. They found that he knew men and nations, 
history and principles of government, and the practical possibilities 
of the future. 

They found, too, that he was a true patriot. For he saw him- 
self, like Sienkiewicz, financially ruined by the war, but gave up 
his chief effort to the cause of Poland. 

All these things might have surprised the gazing nations of the 
world. But the Poles were not surprised. The nation had confi- 
dence in the power of the old Polish traditions, and those fine tra- 
ditions governed Paderewski and Sienkiewicz, Dmowski and all the 
new leaders of the Polish republic. 



32 GREATNESS OF THE FUTURE POLAND 

Eooiles of 
Freedom 

THE world has not learned to read the great Polish poets, as 
in time they will be read. They will be read when the world 
comes to realize more fully all that it owes to the old Polish 
race, and understands how the great literature of the people ex- 
presses the ideals of that race. 

The time is not far away when Adam Mickiewicz will be trans- 
lated more completely and more fully. Humanity will be richer 
when that is done. For Mickiewicz was born after Poland and 
Lithuania had lost their liberties. He died in Constantinople, far 
from his own land. 

Yet he is the greatest of all the Polish poets, whose epics are 
on fire with freedom and the glory of revolution. Other nations 
had their greatest poets singing in their days of triumph, but Po- 
land's Homer sang in her days of oppression. 

How is this possible? Because the Polish people refuse to be- 
lieve that Poland is downcast forever. They believe as they sing, 
"Poland Is Not Yet Lost." They believe in the Great Future, and 
their poets have sung and their soldiers have fought in the spirit 
of that future. 

Mickiewicz died in a foreign land. And in Paris died Freder- 
ick Chopin, the Polish composer. Poland has had to see her great 
sons part from her, to share their glory with another land, to die 
in a land of strange language. 

But this is the glory of her great men. They belong to Poland, 
and, if left to their own preference, might often prefer to live in 
the quiet plains of the old Polish country. But they are destined 
to travel abroad, and thereby to prove that they belong to all hu- 
manity. 

Copernicus 
to Mme. Curie 

THE new Free Poland will be able to educate her own sons for 
their share in the world's work. She need not doubt that grand 
results will come to the world from this, for she knows that 
great things have already been wrought by the learned sons and 
daughters of her people. 



PROVED BY GREAT MEN OF THE PAST 33 



There are many things for which Poland deserves honor, but 
has not been honored. The famous Russian ballet of Petrograd 
was originally a Polish ballet in Warsaw. The many Polish dances 
which have been danced throughout the world, such as the polka 
and the mazurka, show the genius of the Poles for the Slavic dance. 

A typical illustration of what Poland has suffered is found in 
the fate of the old Royal Library of Warsaw. After the Russian 
occupation this immense collection of 1,500,000 books and manu- 
scripts was taken to Petrograd, to form the foundation of the Im- 
perial Library. If Poles had not loved and known literature, Russia 
I might not have had an Imperial Library. 

But there are some great achievements of the Polish race which 

none can question or deny. There are great works of music, and 

history, and philosophy in which the Polish mind has shared. There 

are thousands of indications in the past of what the glory of the 

! future will be, under universal schools and democratic institutions. 

In addition to this, Polish scientists have performed two serv- 
ices which alone could make the race immortal. 

The first of these was the discovery of the solar system by 
Copernicus. 

The second was the discovery of radium by Mme. Curie. 

How Poles 
Won Recognition 

NO ONE needs to recite mere facts of the life of Nicholas 
Copernicus, the monk of Thorn, who first proved that the 
world moves around the sun. 

No one needs to dwell on the mere facts of the life of Mme. 
Sklodowska-Curie, the discoverer of radium, the only woman ever 
elected to the Sorbonne. 

One needs only to mention them. They prove that the Polish 
race sometimes can furnish leaders to the world when leaders are 
needed. They show it has sometimes fallen to Poles to perform 
priceless service, which the world could not afford to miss. 

Nicholas Copernicus of Thorn and Frauenberg, born a few years 
before Columbus discovered America, made discoveries in the 
heavens above as great as those of Columbus upon the sea. Like 



34 GREATNESS OF THE FUTURE POLAND 



Columbus, Copernicus was not merely a great man. He was the 
man whose great discoveries made other men great. 

Copernicus had no telescope. He had nothing but his clear eyes, 
and his clear brain, and his courage. He read all the ancient books, 
and they all declared that the sun goes around the earth. Yet by 
his clear brain, and his clear sight, and his patient study of the 
heavens, he was able to see that all the books were wrong. The 
learning of all the centuries was mistaken. He discovered that the 
earth is merely one of the planets, all whirling around the sun. He 
even estimated the length of the year on each of the planets. 

All this is familiar to us now, just as America is familiar, and 
the printing-press is familiar. But we all know that without Colum- 
bus there would have been no United States of America. Without 
the first printing presses of Gutenberg there would have been no 
modern newspapers. So without Copernicus there would have been 
no modern astronomy. The work of a thousand great men, such 
as Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Herschel, is based on the achievements 
of the Polish Copernicus. 

The work of Mme. Curie, and the wonders of radium, are more 
familiar by recent discussion. Mme. Curie has also, in a sense, 
founded a new era in science, as Copernicus did. She is the one 
striking proof that after these centuries the Polish brain is still 
clear and powerful, originative, independent, looking to the future. 

What will be the future of Poland in art, in music, in literature, 
in science, in world-statesmanship? 

Everyone asks, but no one knows just how great it will be. But 
everyone knows it must be great. It cannot be commonplace or 
ordinary. The Polish race is a race of greatness, and has proved 
this under blighting oppression. The leaders of such a race, when 
it is freed, will be among the giants of humanity. 



Poland's New Era Statesman Are Champions 
of Progressive Policy 

THE new republic of Poland has already the shadow of a 
Constitution, with terms to make the new democracy worthy 
of its freedom. 

These are some principles which the New Poland will write into 
her fundamental law : 

Universal liberty of religion and race. 

Universal suffrage for men and women. 

Complete representative government with direct elections. 

Equal taxation. 

Universal compulsory education. 

The closest fraternal relations with Czecho-Slovakia, Jugoslavia, 
republican Russia and all the other free nations of the world. 

A policy of maintaining world-peace, in harmony with the ef- 
forts of the Allied Democracies now victorious in the war. 

These principles are sure to form a portion of the Constitution 
of Free Poland. There is no speculation in declaring this. These 
things are certain. 

This does not mean that these ideas have been adopted by the 
Polish leaders because such principles are current in the world 
everywhere. If such ideas were not current anywhere else, they 
would be found current in Poland. They have been the thought 
of the representative Polish patriots for many years. They .spring 
from great principles of liberty enunciated in Poland in all the 
revolutions. 

Poles Learn 
From History 

EVERY friend of Poland notes how frequently the Polish lead- 
ers cite the past history of the kingdom-republic. Nowhere 
else except in the United States and Great Britian has history 
been made so constantly the subject of patriotic appeal. 

The reason for this is a reason which illuminates the whole fu- 
ture of Poland. Polish history is cited so that the modern Pole 



36 Poland's new era statesmen are 



can understand the virtues of the old patriots, and also the mistakes 
of defeated leaders. 

The Poles do not propose to reconstruct merely the ancient 
kingdom-republic. They propose to learn from the grand records 
of the kingdom-republic whatever is inspiring. They propose also 
to study any warning which past distresses and sorrows may give 
to a pure-hearted and clear-visioned lover of the ancestral land. 

When Poland was building on foundations of democracy she 
triumphed. When outside alien autocracies had too much influence 
on her nobles she suffered. When she trusted the Czars she re- 
gretted it ; when she trusted Prussia she was lost. 

Every triumph of Poland at home or on foreign battlefields has 
been a triumph for the democracy latent within her. Every disas- 
ter and distress has been due to some alien enemy force, working 
against democracy. 

This is the eternal lesson to the modern Pole or the American 
of Polish blood who cannot lose a filial interest in the plains of the 
Vistula. The Polish patriot loves his history, even when he reads 
it with tears. For the history of Poland repeats to him, warningly, 
solemnly, the same lesson: "There is safety for Great Poland only 
in Democracy !" 

When the Pole reads of the first kings, of the dynasty of Piast, 
he rejoices that the great founder of this line was a wheelwright. 
When he records the triumphs of Casimir the Great, he affixes to 
him the title, "The Peasant King." The Pole honors John Sobieski, 
not because he was born to the kingship, but because he proved 
worthy of being elected to the crown. 

Submerged 
Statesmen 

THIS explains not merely the attitude of the present-day Polish 
leader. It explains also the surprising fact that the Polish 
leaders come before the world with a definite national policy, 
based on modern progress and also based on the ancient precedents 
of Poland. 

In other words, Poland presents to the world finished states- 
men, ready to take part in any council of nations. Where have 
they been trained? In one of the most wonderful schools of the 



CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESSIVE POLICY 37 

world, the school of Polish liberty, maintained ever since the par- 
| tition by an unbroken succession of patriots in Russian, Prussian 
and Austrian Poland. 

Here we come to one of the most wonderful stories of history, 
i Hhe story of the Submerged Statesmen of Poland. They are men 
who have been laying the foundations of a national policy ever 
since before the last partition. They have been building steadily, 
in the confidence of Poland's deliverance, so that Poland could be 
prepared. 

This is why the Polish nation is today fitted for self-government, 
though long suppressed. It is fitted to take a place among nations, 
though long under crushing oppression of despoilers. 

Dmowskts 
Vision, 1902 

TO SHOW that Poland has her statesmen, one might quote one 
comment on the international situation made in 1902 by Ro- 
man Dmowski, a political party leader among the Russian 
Poles. 

This was in 1902, before the first peace conference at The 
Hague, before the Russo-Japanese war, before the nations began 
the race of building dreadnoughts. And Dmowski wrote in French 
in a book published in Paris : 

"Just as it was the fall of Poland that gave Prussia special im- 
portance in Europe and made possible her leadership in modern 
Germany, so the renaissance of Poland as a political factor would 
mean an end to the domination of Prussia in the German empire." 

Roman Dmowski then was the leader of a political party in 
Poland known as the Polish National Democratic party. He con- 
stantly laid down the doctrine that Germany was aiming at expan- 
sion into the east of Europe. 

He rested the hopes of the safety of Poland in making Poland 
as strong as she could be within the Russian empire, until the day 
dawned when she might go out from the Russian empire and from 
the other empires. 

The world did not note the comment of the Polish leader in 
1902. But in 1918 Roman Dmowski spoke as chairman of the Pol- 



38 Poland's new era statesmen are 



ish National Committee in Paris. On this side of world cataclysms 
he declared again : 

"The assurance of liberty to Russia and the smaller nations is 
dependent entirely upon one condition, and that is the re-erection 
of a powerful and great Polish state." 

And this time he finds the statesmen of all the world co-oper- J 
ating with him, and seeing with the same vision. 

The world-democracies will restore Poland, not merely to per- 
form an act of justice, not merely to reward a gallant race which 
has steadfastly championed all liberty; Poland will be restored as 
one of the great champions of eastern Europe, whose task in her 
own sphere will be the task of America and England and France, 
to keep the world safe for Democracy. 

How Great 
Poland Grows 

AMERICANS of every descent know how our republic grew 
out of the Continental Congress held during the Revolution. 
Europe smiled when Edmund Burke declared that this Con- 
tinental Congress sitting in the American wilderness was a body 
of great statesmen. 

So perhaps Germany and Russia did not realize that the leaders f 
of submerged Poland were statesmen, that the musician Paderewski, 
the soldier Pilsudski, the novelist Sienkiewicz, were statesmen. 

But statesmanship was nevertheless developing, and is now here. 
It developed after the Napoleonic wars. In 1815 the hopes of the 
Polish supporters of Napoleon were overthrown with Napoleon's 
overthrow. In 1830 the ill-fated revolt of that year ended even the 
nominal distinction between Russian Poland and Russia. In 1863 
another revolt was followed by more repression and sorrow for 
the oppressed people. 

These revolts were the revolts of great hearts, but their aims 
were dreams. It is the work of statesmen to obey the great ideals 
of a people, but to make their aims practical. The statesmen of 
Poland did this. They felt, they represented all the great free 
aspiration of the people. But they re-directed this national feel- 
ing to definite results in liberty. 



' 



CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESSIVE POLICY 39 

Conciliation, 
Reconstruction 

AFTER 1863 a "party of conciliation" appeared in Prussian, 
Russian, Austrian Poland. In each empire the policy was to 
gain as much liberty as possible under the reigning power. 
j The leaders of this movement gained some benefits almost imme- 
! diately in Austria. In Russia their work was slower in developing 
I results, but the final results were wonderful indeed. 

The movement had as a regular part of its system the study of 
I Polish history. The leaders declared the history should be studied, 
to learn how Poland came into such distresses, and how she might 
be delivered. 

The leaders were confronted with a great problem in the people 
themselves. Here were millions long suppressed. The serfdom of 
! peasants was an institution in the old Polish state. The Constitu- 
tion of 1791 would have freed the peasant serfs, but before they 
I were freed Poland itself was taken prisoner and torn to pieces by 
the Third Partition. 

So in 1886, only five years after the assassination of Alexander 
II, the Polish League was formed in the Russian section. The ob- 
ject of this league was to carry on a new propaganda of National- 
ism among the Polish peasants, a propaganda based upon history 
and literature. 

The Polish peasant was inspired with the ideal of a new Poland. 
It was not to be a kingdom of inherited or elective dynasties. It 
was to be a self-governing unit. 

The hopes of the peasants were not raised too high. The first 
aim was for autonomy within the Russian empire. Independence 
was to be gained in the fullness of time. 

The movement at first was secret, perilous. Later, the lighter 
rule of Nicholas II permitted more open agitation. The movement 
took the name of the National Democratic Polish party. Then was 
seen the real spirit of the New Poland, for the peasants, the vil- 
lagers, the gentry, the middle classes, the nobility, all seemed to be 
coming more and more closely together. 

Then came the Russian partial revolution of 1905, followed by 
the calling of the Duma. There were elections in Russian Poland, 
and in every single district the National Democratic Polish party 



40 Poland's new era statesmen are 

elected its candidate. This showed that the new movement repre- 
sented the whole Polish people, rich and poor. 

United Poland^ 
1914-1918 

THE years from 1905 to 1914 saw gains for Polish liberty of 
thought in Russia, and also in Austria. In both there was 
also a greater understanding among the different classes. In 
both leaders were found who wished to work out as much liberty 
as possible under the imperial system, waiting for deliverance. 

This, in both Russia and Austria, formed a school of statesman- 
ship for the young Poland. And all the time the three old sections 
of Poland had their secret military schools. In Austria, Russia 
and Prussia Polish military companies have drilled in woods and 
valleys since 1876. And just as Polish political parties formed the 
nucleus of the new Polish statesmanship, so Polish revolutionary 
companies formed the germ of the new Polish army. 

The statesmen of both lands have informed and inspired the 
people. The war between the Teutonic empires and the Russian 
power for a time divided the Poles. The Russian Polish leaders 
would like to put their trust in Slavic success, and still more in the 
liberty-loving policies of England and France. For a time, how- 
ever, some of the Galician Poles joined with Austria under fair 
promises. 

The outcome of this was neither pro-German nor pro-Czar. In 
Russia the Polish leaders saw less and less hope of real freedom in 
a distinctly Russian triumph, despite the liberal proclamations of 
Grand Duke Nicholas. Grand Duke Nicholas saluted the Poles as 
Poles. Previously Russia had almost ignored the existence of any 
nationality but Russian nationality in her immediate dominion. 

At the same time the Polish Legion in Austria was becoming 
more and more disaffected from the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns. 
The end came when the leaders were imprisoned or shot as traitors. 
Poles in the German army on the French side, when taken prisoner, 
enlisted in scores in the French army. 



CHAMPIONS OF PROGRESSIVE POLICY 41 

Poland an Ally 
of the Allies 

THE three empires did not realize what was occurring. The 
war was merging the thought of all Poles into one. The 
thought of the vast main body of the Polish race in Russia, 
Austria and Prussia became not pro-German, not pro-Czar, not 
pro-Austrian — but pro-Ally. Their spirit was the spirit of the 
American declarations, that the war was a war for Democracy. 
The thought of the overwhelming majority of American Poles 
showed the same trend. More and more, day by day, the Polish- 
American became pro-Ally. 

Long before the Polish National Committee was organized in 
Paris, long before the deliverance of Poland was assured by the 
Allies, long before Russia overthrew the Czars, the Polish people 
throughout the world took their stand for freedom against 
autocracy. 

They stood for freedom before they knew their old homeland 
was to share in it. Poland was an allied nation before the Allies 
realized it. And the Poles remained faithful to the Allies in Ger- 
many and Austria, despite all tyrannies, and stood firm for the 
Allies in Russia, even though the Bolsheviki signed a peace treaty 
with Germany at Brest-Litovsk. 

Poland is prepared for liberty. She has earned it. She has 
been trained for it. Her soldiers and the soldiers of Polish blood 
from the four corners of the earth have earned freedom for her. 

Their battle is the fruit of the secret companies of freemen who 
have been training for all these years in the woods and valleys. 

Poland has come to a place among the Allied Nations not by 
accident or chance, but by the definite policy of enlightened states- 
manship, by the choice of a people. Her people have voted alike in 
the three partitions of the dismembered land. They speak as one 
for their claims, and as one they face the future. 



Sons of Oppressed Poland Liberators 
In Many Lands 

DESCENDANTS of Polish ancestors in all corners of the earth 
now turn their eyes wistfully toward the old land of the plain, 
where the River Vistula again flows in freedom toward the 
wharves of Danzig. 

These descendants of the old Polish exiles have always thought 
of modern Poland as a country in chains — a nation whose repub- 
lican heart still beats, but which is in triple bondage to Russia, 
Prussia and Austria. 

It seems to them like a dream to see that old land set free by 
great, strong nations. The rejoicing of Poland's liberated millions 
is joined by the gladness of millions of descendants of Polish an- 
cestors in the United States and Canada, in South America, South 
Africa, France, Great Britain, and other far-scattered countries. 

These descendants of the Polish blood in all lands have a full 
right to share in the rejoicing. For they have shared in the liber- 
ation. 

The present deliverance of Poland is no mere whimsical act of 
justice by the great and war-weary powers. 

It is largely a reward to Poland for the work of liberty which 
her exiled sons have done in more lands than one. 

It is largely a result of the way in which the children of this 
kingdom have kept a Polish Question living before the nations, 
though Poland herself seemed dead. 

The Living 
Spirit of Poland 

THOUGH Poland was dead, her sons carried her spirit into 
many lands. Thus they came to the United States. 

A few immortal leaders appeared here in our Revolution. 

A few groups of exiles came before the Civil War. After the 

Civil War a great emigration was noted from all the Polish lands, 

the flight of fugitives from the taxation of Russia, the militarism 

of Austria, and the racial and religious persecution of Prussia. 



44 SONS OF OPPRESSED POLAND 



These emigrants came in thousands to America, and scattered 
abroad also in other countries. They assumed the citizenship of 
these countries. They brought up their children under strange 
skies and in the sound of a strange language. But they brought 
them up in the old Polish traditions of freedom and equality. 

Americans of Polish descent fix their personal hopes in this land 
and nation. But they take deep interest in Liberty in all countries. 
And it is because American Poles have been able to enter into the 
spirit of American liberty, and French Poles have shared the great 
labors for deliverance in France, that the free nations have been 
so eager to recognize Free Poland as a sister nation. 

The Buried 
Republic 

FREE Poland was recognized, in her committee in Paris, while 
Germanic troops were occupying every one of her old capitals, 
and while Prussia doubtless was planning a perpetual domin- 
ion over the Vistula. This recognition was made possible because 
Poles, in every land in the world, have proved that they have the 
hearts and minds of freemen. 

The nations could see that a land which produced such spirits 
of freedom, the land which could hold the love of its children after 
50 years of exile, and could charm the hearts of grandchildren who 
had never even seen the country, would require no "training of the 
people for self-government." Poland was buried, but not lost. 

The Undying ■: 

Inheritance 

DUM VINCOR, LIBROR." 
This Latin motto was struck on a coin at Warsaw in 1611, 
the year which saw the printing of the King James Bible. 
In that year the first English settlement in America at Jamestown 
was only four years old. 

The coin was struck after the Polish troops had captured the 
disputed city of Smolensk from the Russians. It was a great day 
of triumph for the Polish arms, and the period was one of decline 
and weakness in Russia. 



LIBERATORS IN MANY LANDS 45 

The motto of such a time might have been something imperial 
and haughty. But instead, the slogan given to the captured fortress 
is "Dum vincor, libror," or "Though I am conquered, I am set free." 

The Polish kingdom-republic knew that any land conquered 
from the Russian Czars on one side, or from the Prussian and Aus- 
trian monarchs on the other, was indeed set free. It was liberty 
for any city or citizen to escape from Russian or Teutonic hands 
into Poland. 

Previous articles in this series have dwelt upon this point. The 
growth of Poland was not a growth of conquest. It was chiefly 
the addition of cities and territories which sought the freedom of 
her protection. 

Centuries ago a group of Prussian cities, oppressed by the 
knights of the Teutonic order, called for Polish armies to save them 
from oppression. Livonia added herself voluntarily to the king- 
dom-republic. 

When Lithuania and Poland were united, Lithuania kept her 
language and her religion and her courts. The final union of Poland 
and Lithuania brought liberties to the Lithuanians which were un- 
known before. Every country over which Poland extended its rule 
could say with captured Smolensk: "Though I am conquered, I 
am set free." 

The Destiny of 
the Poles 

WE AMERICANS love to believe our country has a high 
destiny, in liberty and enlightenment. 

We can now see that Great Britain also had a high 
destiny. She was so long feared because of her terrible strength. 
But we can now see that that very strength was to be used, in a 
dreadful hour, to protect the world from destruction. 

We can see that France had a great destiny, in the unchanged 
laughing bravery of her people. Only such a nation could offer 
their beautiful country as the living sacrifice of war, and fight 
unflinchingly until the day of victory. 

Devoted Belgium, and chivalrous Italy, the faithful sons of 
Czecho-Slovakia, and all the other liberty-loving nations, have 
proved that they had a great mission in the world. 



46 SONS OF OPPRESSED POLAND 

And now, as we have a better understanding of the different 
peoples, the real destiny of Poland is made clear. She was the 
advance nation of democratic liberty. When she had power, she 
conferred freedoms, though surrounded by despotism. By the 
freedom of her own citizens she inspired all her people with the 
spirit of liberty. 

Then, when the kingdom itself was destroyed, her national 
destiny was still a destiny of liberty. Her sons went out into all 
countries. And wherever an oppressed people lifted up their 
hands against oppressive government, somewhere in the ranks 
were Polish liberators, and somewhere in the councils of most of 
them were Polish leaders. 

One historian declares: 

"Up to the eighteenth century, every attempt to check abso- 
lutism among kings was inspired by Polish institutions." 

When one reads the old Polish constitution in the light of what 
the new Polish constitution is to be, it seems antique and aristo- 
cratic. But when read in the light of the governments which sur- 
rounded Poland in the old days, it was radical and liberal, and 
it foreshadowed the coming of a true republic in the course of 
time. 

It caused continual unrest under the thrones of tyrants, and it 
continued down to our own time to be a destroyer of autocracy. 

International 
Heroes 

THADDEUS KOSCIUSZKO'S name returns to memory 
whenever the foreign services of Poles are mentioned. 

Kosciuszko fought for the freedom of the American col- 
onies, but there still was not freedom enough in America to satisfy 
his heart. Kosciuszko enrolled his name among the first in Amer- 
ica to declare for the emancipation of Negro slaves. 

At one time there was a plan to offer to Kosciuszko and his 
people an immense tract of land on the Ohio, for their settlement 
as citizens. If Kosciuszko had settled here, instead of returning 
to the last fatal war for his country, he might have led even the 
leaders of this new nation in their doctrines of liberty. States- 
manship and justice might have settled the slavery problem in the 



LIBERATORS IN MANY LANDS 47 



United States, without the bloodshed and horror of civil war. For 
in all the advances of Poland toward liberty she never knew civil 
war. 

Kosciuszko and Pulaski are well known to Americans as among 
the Revolutionary heroes. But to the reader of Polish history 
they are only types. They are only two of the sons of Poland 
who went forth to fight for the liberation of afflicted lands. 

Eloquently and justly Antoni Chlonowieski declares, in review- 
ing the foreign record of Polish heroes : 

"The years 1831 and 1848 saw Polish emigrants at every bar- 
ricade and on every battlefield where independence was the issue 
of battle." 

"Brigands," some of these were called by the oppressive gov- 
ernments from which they rebelled. "Brigands," again, was what 
the Czars' autocratic government called the first soldiers who de- 
clared for independent Poland in the present war. But despite 
the condemnation of the conquerors, these rebels were able to help 
other nations to liberty, when they could not yet free their own 
Poland. 



Hungary and 
Italy 

THE years 1831 and 1848, mentioned by Chlonowieski, were 
the great years of revolution, fruitful of results in some 
countries, fruitless in others. But the scattered exiles of 
Poland were found in all movements for wider freedom. 

The Italians glory in the statesmanship of Cavour, in the dash- 
ing genius of Garibaldi, in the foresight and broad vision of Victor 
Emanuel I and his descendants. These names are justly held in 
I honor, as the name of Washington is held in America. These 
great Italians fought and labored for Free Italy, and United Italy. 
Their victory is now only completed with the conquests in Austria. 
But the uprising for liberty in Sicily was aided by the Polish 
! Mirolawski, and for a time the army of Sardinia in Italy honored 
! Gen. Chrzanowski. Garibaldi knew many Poles among his red- 
| shirted army of liberators. 

The Polish warriors for freedom were not all soldiers by train- 



48 SONS OF OPPKESSED POLAND 

ing. To Milan came Adam Mickiewicz the poet, with a legion he 
had organized. 

And Mickiewicz was still a poet, still a teacher of high truth. 
He declared that the world's sorrows were due to the sad fact that 
rulers are following pagan principles of might, instead of Christian 
principles of justice and right. How often, in the last few years of 
sorrow, has the world recognized the evil that can still be wrought 
by a spirit of pagan tyranny and pagan might ! 

Revolution in Austria knew the name of the Polish Gen. Bern, 
and the calmer statesmanship which brought about some consti- 
tutional government in Austria enrolled the names of Smolka and 
Goluchowski. 

Hungary, which has now declared itself independent of Aus- 
tria, had help from the sons of conquered Poland in her old strug- 
gles with the Hapsburgs. Gen. Dembinski, Gen. Wysocki, Gen. 
Bern, all will be remembered by future Hungarian historians as 
our writers remember Kosciuszko. 

Poland 
Remembered 

POLAND'S sons have thus continued to fight for liberty, when 
Poland's own liberties were gone. But they never forgot 
Poland itself, nor lost the hope that some day they would 
rally their forces to her defense. 

So eager were all Poland's sons in the homeland and outside 
to strike a blow for her, that when the Great War burst forth they 
struck for a time on different sides. 

French Poles hurried to the Tricolor to strike at Germany. 
Many American Poles, long before the United States entered the 
war, crowded to Canada to join the armies of the British empire. 
In Austria some great but deceived men, headed by Gen. Joseph 
Pilsudski, formed a separate Polish legion to fight against Russia. 

This Gen. Pilsudski and his forces will be discussed in a later 
article. His is the story of a man of modern Poland, a man of 
princely descent but of intense democracy. It is the story of a 
man who was deceived into false hopes by the Teutons, but who 
found out the deception, and was thrown into prison with all his 



LIBERATORS IN MANY LANDS 49 



leaders as a traitor. Now he is released from prison, and joins 
with all his compatriots in other lands for the one great cause. 

Poland has a broken history, indeed. But she has an unbroken 
line of warriors under different standards of freedom, decorated 
in this war with the medals of all the great Allies of Democracy. 



Poland's Sons Re-created Poland In Their War 
for World Democracy 

TWO WEEKS after the outbreak of the Great War a group 
of leading Poles of all political parties met in Warsaw. 

Warsaw is the oldest capital of the dukes of Mazovia, and 
became capital of Poland in 1609. It was the scene of sieges in 
many wars with Sweden and Russia. It was the heroic city of 
the last battles of Kosciuszko, and the mother of many Polish 
revolutions. So all Poland listens to a voice from Warsaw, as 
if from a voice of the mighty dead and the voice of the living 
Poland. 

These Polish councilors met to weigh the proclamation of lib- 
erty to Poland which had just been made by the Grand Duke 
Nicholas, commander of the Russian armies. 

They all knew that Russian imperialism had been a bloody 
and ruthless tyranny. They saw little hope if the war should per- 
petuate the Czar. But they saw also the looming enemy of Russia 
was Germany, which for centuries had been the chief enemy of 
Poland. And far beyond Germany they saw the other Allies, 
France and Great Britian, in whom Poland, like Belgium and 
Armenia and Palestine, could finally trust. 

Therefore these men, representing the four political parties 
in Poland voting on candidates for the Russian Duma, declared 
for acceptance of the proclamation of Grand Duke Nicholas. 

Those who attended that conference report that there were 
doubtful hearts who remembered the armies of Suwarrow and 
the long files of exiles on the Siberian road. But it was a time 
of decision between the Allies and the forces of Kaiserism. 

These articles have already emphasized the fact that the Poles 
knew Kaiserism for centuries before the Belgian outrages re- 
vealed its character to the world. 

For Kaiserism these Poles could not fight. 

And on the other hand was the imperial pledge of the Grand 
Duke: 

"POLAND SHALL BE RE-BORN, FREE IN FAITH, IN 
LANGUAGE, IN SELF-GOVERNMENT !" 

The answer of the Polish political parties showed the spirit 
of their people when they concluded their reply with these words: 



52 Poland's sons re-created Poland 



"THE BLOOD OF POLAND'S SONS SHED IN UNITED 
COMBAT AGAINST THE GERMANS WILL SERVE 
EQUALLY AS A SACRIFICE OFFERED UPON THE AL- 
TAR OF HER RESURRECTION." 

An utterance which now reads as if the united parties of 
Russian Poland were inspired as prophets. They were not in- 
spired as prophets but as patriots. They all felt the spirit of the 
Polish past, which was to be the spirit of the Polish future. 

So today no summary of all the battles of Poles in this war 
could make a more complete summary of their achievements than 
these words: 

"The blood of Poland's sons shed in united combat against the 
Germans will serve equally as a sacrifice offered upon the altar 
of her resurrection!" 

Divided Action,, 
United Spirit 

U T T NITED combat against the Germans" did not seem as- 
^ j sured in the first flaming years of the war. United ac- 
tion would seem impossible, because the first conscrip- 
tions of the three empires ranged Polish subjects under the three 
banners. 

Perhaps the imperial houses now dethroned imagined that the 
Poles under their generals were acting for Austria, or Russia, or 
Germany. It was clear to watchful Polish-Americans, and to in- 
ternational Poles like Paderewski, that the real leaders were act- 
ing for Poland only. 

From Warsaw 
to Cracow 

THE WORLD, beset with the maddening anxieties of the sud- 
den outbreak of war, was painfully puzzled by the contrast 
between Russian and Austrian Poland. 
For while Poles on the Russian side were organizing in behalf 
of Russia, Poles on the Austrian side were organizing to fight 
against Russia. The center of the Russian movement was the 
old capital of Warsaw. The center of the movement against 
Russia was the old capital of Cracow. 



IN THEIR WAR FOR WORLD DEMOCRACY 53 

In this as in every early phase of the war the Teuton side 
gained first advantage. In Cracow rose up Gen. Joseph Pilsudski, 
descended of a princely family in Lithuania, but himself a radical 
Socialist. 

Gen. Pilsudski knew of the sufferings of Poland under Russia. 
He had personally suffered much for his homeland. When the 
turmoil of the Russo-Japanese war arose Gen. Pilsudski and his 
colleagues began to foresee the Great War. They planned, as 
revolutionaries had been planning since 1876, to be ready for the 
Great War with a Polish force. 

The Great War burst forth. Many of the Poles in Russia 
tumbled into the Russian ranks. Poles in Germany were drawn 
by machinery into the Germany army. But in Galicia or Austrian 
Poland, and in parts of Russian Poland in touch with Austrian 
movements, a Polish army which had been organized in the dark- 
ness marched forth into the light. 

Four days after the war broke out Gen. Joseph Pilsudski left 
Cracow with the first section of this army, with the Polish flag 
aloft, and marched directly to the Russian border. At Kielce, on 
Russian-Polish soil, the independence of Poland under Austrian 
protection was proclaimed, and a high celebration was held in 
which Russian and Austrian Poles were united. 

The Single 
Purpose 

THE LOVERS of Poland might well have wept to see Polish 
leaders in Warsaw upholding Russia and trusting in the 
Allies ; Poles in Germany driven or dragged into the armies 
of the Kaiser; Poles in Austria claiming and proclaiming liberty, 
and turning all their wrath upon the Russia which their kinsmen 
upheld. 

Was this a breach that could not be healed? Was it an un- 
changeable division? 

It was not. The unity of purpose of these scattered armies 
was more plain than their divergences of action. 

We know that in the Civil War both the North and the South 
displayed American character. We know that each side in its 
own way fought for principle. We can forget the sorrow and 



54 Poland's sons re-created Poland 



hatred of old years in the memory of the valor and devotion of 
each side to its own cause. 

But in our Civil War there were two causes in conflict. In 
Poland there was only One Cause — the Great Cause of Poland. 
The conflict was between methods of gaining that .great object, 
the independence of the old republic. 

Battle-Cries 
of a Century 

i 4T T OW SHALL we be free?" has been the cry of the 

yearning patriot heart in Poland since Poland lost her 
freedom. 

This was the aim of Kosciuszko and his army of peas- 
ants with scythes. Such was the cry of the Revolutionaries of 
1830 and 1863. In their own way these heroes struck for the 
freedom of Poland, and each leader in a different way. 

So the inherited passion for liberty came down to the founders 
of the political movements in Russian Poland. So it came down 
also to the organizers of the secret Polish troops in both Austrian 
and Russian Poland. Each in its own way struck for Poland, 
though the conference at Warsaw aimed at the Hohenzollerns and 
the armies from Cracow aimed at the Romanoffs. 

Never Against 
"The Allies' 3 

NOW BOTH these parties, under different emperors, had 
some great devotions in common. Both were alike devoted 
to the great memories of the past. Both were alike loyal 
to the great friendship which France and Great Britian had shown 
for years to the Polish people. 

These lands had not set Poland free. But they had never joined 
in her enslavement. On the other hand, English and French 
poets have eloquently extolled the Polish heroes of liberty, as if 
they were heroes of Paris or London. 

So the Polish legion that marched out from Cracow against 
Russia was committed to fight against Russia only. It was to 
fight the dynasty of the Czars which had oppressed Poland. So 



IN THEIR WAR FOR WORLD DEMOCRACY 55 

the armies which the Warsaw committee called into existence 
marched against Germany, against the dynasty of the Hohen- 
zollerns which had oppressed Poland. 

This illuminates the dark confusion of the Polish situation. It 
is another demonstration of the power of this downtrodden na- 
tion to exert a national strength, and to demonstrate a national 
spirit. 

This national spirit demanded only that the old crusade of 
liberty be fulfilled. 

To the Pole of the Warsaw committee, hoping that something 
could be done for Poland through the desperation of Russia's 
promises, Prussia was the Western Front of Poland's War. 

To the Pole of the Cracow army, praying that his right arm 
could strike some blow for his homeland with Austria trembling 
at his back, the land of the Czars was the Eastern Front of Poland's 
War. 

From the first roar of battle Poland's sons fought this war for 
Poland. Their spirit was one spirit, marching west or east. 

Both fought better than they knew. When Austrian Poles dug 
trenches in the sacred soil of Russian Poland, or when Russian 
Poles crossed into Prussian Polish territory, both dreamed of a 
new and united Poland. And the blows on both sides told. 

Prussia, the 
Last Enemy 

THE POLISH army in Austria lived to see the house of 
Romanoff fall. They saw the young republic of Russia pro- 
claim Polish independence as a matter of course. They had 
already seen proclamation of free Poland by Austria, and a recog- 
nition of the Polish army had come from Vienna in the first year of 
the war. 

But Austria, if she dreamed that any son of the old kingdom- 
republic was fighting for the Hapsburgs, had an awakening dur- 
ing the years. It was found that the East Galician Polish Legion 
had taken the oath to Poland only — it was disbanded. It was 
found by the Poles on the other hand that the German allies of 
Austria were invading Poland with the worst rapine of the whole 
war. The years went on, thunderous and stormy years, and the 



56 Poland's sons re-created poland 



Poles in Austria put less and less hope in the Austrian promises. 
The Austrians depended less and less on the Polish troops. 

Austrian Polish legionaries deserted to Russia, especially to 
republican Russia. The Poles in Austria saw more and more with 
the eyes of their brethren in Russia, and with the eyes of their 
brethren in France, and their brethren in the United States. 

Democracy the 
Issue 

THE RUSH of war events showed more and more the true 
issue: Autocracy against Democracy. This was the vital 
issue of Poland's life. The entrance of America into the war 
found the Poles of all sections of old Poland, and their kinsmen 
in every land of refuge, united on the great course to be followed. 
The far-scattered nation had already agreed on the Great 
cause. They had divided on the methods. They found, at last, 
that "the blood of Poland's sons shed in united combat against 
Germany will serve equally as a sacrifice offered upon the altar of 
her resurrection." 

So the last years of the war found Austria imprisoning and 
interning and shooting officers and soldiers of that Polish Legion 
who had discovered the vanity of her promises. The Polish troops 
in Russia made no war against republican Russia, but they stood 
out against the pro-German Bolsheviki. In the very last year of 
the war, the Polish flag flew in France and in Russia and in other 
fields, and Polish blood was found in every army under the Allied 
flag. 

And now that the war is over, the old unity of purpose is 
recognized. Roman Dmowski of the Warsaw committee serves 
his country in Paris. Gen. Pilsudski of the Austrian Polish Legion 
serves in Warsaw. Gen. Haller, who once fought in Russia, heads 
the Polish army in France, and to Danzig comes Ignace Jan Pader- 
ewski of the Paris committee in a British warship. 

These men were divided in policy before. They will divide 
again. They differ in opinion on many things. But they demon- 
strate, as everything truly Polish demonstrates, the unity of the 
Polish nation in the great cause of Liberty for which it is destined 
to live. 



' 'United States of Poland" Rises in Spirit 
of American Republics 

PRESIDENT WILSON is of all men the most quoted when 
anyone would discuss the spirit of the New Poland, which 
is rising from among dead nations to a shining place among 
living ones. 

One hundred years after the death of Thaddeus Kosciuszko, 
the Pole who helped to liberate America but could not free his 
own land, President Wilson declared to the American Congress : 

"Statesmen everywhere are agreed that there should be a united, 
independent and autonomous Poland." 

President Wilson made this declaration three months before 
America was dragged into the war by Prussia bent on self-des- 
truction. Yet Poles throughout America and Europe rose up re- 
joicing at this utterance. It was the first acknowledgment by the 
head of a great power of the outraged rights of their people. 

President Wilson did not merely say "a united Poland." The 
czar had pledged himself to unite Poland, under his own scepter. 
He had promised to restore her Diet, under his own supervision. 
He had promised to maintain her language, but that language was 
to speak the will of the Russian czar. 

Likewise the kaiser would have been glad to pledge a united 
Poland, if he could find some way to join all Poland under Prus- 
sianism. Frederick the Great or Nero would have promised a 
"united Poland" under their single sway. 

President Wilson knew, and the Poles knew, that a united 
Poland was not enough. 

President Wilson said that there should be "a united, inde- 
pendent Poland." He knew that even this was not enough. Prus- 
sia and Austria had even promised that, an independent Poland. 

It was to be a Poland under a king chosen by agreement of 
the house of Hohenzollern and the house of Hapsburg. An in- 
dependent Poland, under a puppet monarch trained to tremble at 
the kaiser's frown, or to obey the slightest hint from Vienna. An 



58 UNITED STATES OF POLAND" 

independent Poland, but not independent of Hohenzollernism or 
Hapsburgism. 

The Full Cup 
of Liberty 

THIS WAS by no means enough. What justice demanded, 
what statesmanship demanded, what civilization demanded 
was a "united, free and AUTONOMOUS Poland." 

Poland must govern herself, not be governed by the czar or 
the German czarina. Poland must direct her own destiny, and 
not see her high hopes destroyed by a deputy of the Prussian or 
Austrian tyrants. 

The words of President Wilson were among the first words of 
greeting from a world statesman to express what Polish patriotism 
has really desired and craved. 

This was not a Russian sub-kingdom. It was not a Prussian- 
Austrian principality. It was a Polish republic. 

Nothing but a republic would bring to the thirsting lips of 
Poland the full cup of Liberty for which they and their fathers 
had suffered such mighty pangs. 

They demanded a Republic, in the foremost rank of the free 
nations of today. Even so the old Kingdom-Republic was in the 
leadership of free nations in those brave centuries. 

The words of President Wilson still echo in Polish hearts 
throughout America and Europe. For when those words were 
uttered, German troops had possession of vast stretches of Rus- 
sian Poland. The empire of the czars was reeling toward its fall. 

Between tottering Russia and conquering Prussia, with Austria 
dropping the mask and commencing to imprison the patriots of 
the Polish Legion, Poland could scarcely expect language from the 
American President which sounded so much like "recognition." 

The Poles have seen other recognitions. They had witnessed 
the increasing sympathy of the French and British from the firing 
of the first guns on the Prussian-Russian frontier. In fact, Presi- 
dent Wilson's words were largely the summing up of the growing 
conviction of statesmen. 



RISES IN SPIRIT OF AMERICAN REPUBLICS 59 

The words of President Wilson, spoken from America while 
America was still a neutral land, were nevertheless words which 
uttered the full thought of Poland's heart. 

For the Poland which her sons and descendants see arising in 
the wide plains of the Vistula, the land which has been the land of 
her people since before the Caesars, is a republic to be built in the 
spirit of the American republic. 

In fact, the only description that can be found for it by Ameri- 
can friends of the Polish cause is the name employed by Dr. A. 
Syski : "The United States of Poland." 

"E Pluribus 
Unum JJ 

NO ONE knows whether the new Republic will really bear 
that name. It is now a name of distinction among the re- 
publics of the world. 

In the former centuries a duchy was proud when it became a 
kingdom. Often a king was rejoiced to call himself Emperor. 
But in our day the United States of America has her tributes of 
admiration from the Republics named after her: 

The United States of Brazil, the United States of Mexico, the 
United States of Colombia, the United States of Venezuela. 

Some Chinese patriots have desired that their immense home- 
land be known as the United States of China. And there are some 
who predict that the Germanic dominions of the fallen Hohen- 
zollerns and Hapsburgs will yet be called the United States of 
Germany — die Vereinigten Staaten von Deutschland ! 

Thus many lands of foreign speech are christened for Liberty 
in the name of the United States. But even where there is no 
adoption of our name, there is an adoption of our real system, 
and an attempt to assume our spirit. 

Our fathers determined to form one nation, but to preserve the 
rights of the states. They would make the states powerful, but 
preserve the rights of countries, and cities, and townships. They 
would make the government powerful, but preserve the rights of 
the individual. 



60 UNITED STATES OF POLAND 



Out of these many liberties they made one great central na- 
tional liberty. They wrote upon their charters the motto, "One 
Out of Many/' or, in Latin, "E Pluribus Unum." To build up 
the power of the nation, and to maintain the liberties of the states 
and of the people, was the whole spirit of this republic. 

Free States of 
Free Poland 

OF ALL states brought into being under the inspiration of 
America, none has so completely caught her spirit as has 
the formative republic of Poland. 
For first of all, this republic wishes to be strong. She desires 
a place among the powerful nations. The Polish Committee at 
Paris, the Polish provisional government in Warsaw, speak in 
their own way for 30,000,000 people. 

The Polish National Department in America, composed of 
American citizens representing 3,000,000 Americans of Polish 
blood, likewise see hope for their kinsmen yonder only in the 
building up of Poland into strength. 

This is why the plans of Polish statesmen sweep over the whole 
wide valley of the Vistula. 

This is why the hopes of Independent Poland have always in- 
cluded the regaining of Gdansk or Danzig. This is a port in the 
Prussian kingdom, formerly under Polish rule, added to Prussia 
by the Second Partition. 

The Vistula is to Poland all that the Missouri-Mississippi sys- 
tem is to the western United States, all that the St. Lawrence is 
to eastern Canada. And Danzig is to the Vistula all that New 
Orleans is to the Mississippi, all that Montreal is to the St. Law- 
rence. It is the city at the mouth of the Polish Vistula, and the 
distributor of the grain and produce of all the Vistula tributaries. 

Poland would see this Gdansk restored, and all the other terri- 
tories snatched from her by the Second Partition restored with it. 
Americans who know their history can sympathize with this. For 
soon after our independence was accomplished Spain forbade us to 
navigate the Mississippi. She could control that stream through 
its upper reaches because she held New Orleans. 



B 



RISES IN SPIRIT OF AMERICAN REPUBLICS 61 



It was only when New Orleans passed to France, and we se- 
cured it in 1803 by the Louisiana purchase, that we really con- 
trolled the Mississippi. 

The Old Freedom 
of Danzig 

UT WOULD Poland oppress Danzig, as the Prussians op- 
pressed Danzig and all other Polish cities stolen in the First 
and Second and Third Partitions? 

Such oppression by Poland would be impossible. The Polish 

Republic has gained recognition from the Allies by its pledge of 

democracy. Democracy in Danzig means the government of that 

~^city by itself, as a city in one of the states of the United States of 

Poland. 

And Poland can point to records in the history of Danzig 
itself to show that this is her policy. This city of Gdansk has a 
thousand years of history, and a thousand years of municipal 
liberty. It belonged of old to the league of trading cities known 
as the Hansa towns, powerful and free. It came under the sway 
of Poland by its own act, when it sought the shelter of the Polish 
Kingdom-Republic as protection against Teutonic tyranny. 

And under Polish rule in those old centuries, Danzig was never 
a subjugated town. It always preserved local autonomy. The 
loss of the freedom of Poland was the loss of the liberties of Dan- 
zig, and the restoration of the Polish republic will give the city 
again its lost Polish freedom. 

States, 

Not Provinces 

THIS IS the plan of Polish patriotism for all the districts to 
be included in the New Poland. These are not to be prov- 
inces, but states. They are to be ruled by the consent of the 
governed. The Polish statesmen of today believe this the real 
path of greatness, the real pledge of Poland's continuing power. 
And only a powerful Poland can perform real and mighty works 
for the cause of world-democracy. 



62 "united states of Poland" 

Let Danzig turn back her records to the free days of Polish 
rule. Let Danzig then add to these records all that modern states- 
men know of modern liberty. , 

Then she can see that the Danzig of the future will be a "Free 
City." She will be freer than all the towns of the Hansa league. 
She will be freer than any Prussian metropolis that has had to 
obey the petty town of Potsdam. 

What Danzig will be, all Poland will be. Though the name 
will be Poland, the country will be a union of states. Of this let 
more be told in a later article. 



Religious Liberty in Poland Assured by- 
Toleration of Ancient Constitution 

I AM NOT king of your consciences !" declared King Sigismund 
Augustus to the people of Poland, after he had mounted the 

throne of the Jagellons in 1548. 

One year before King Sigismund Augustus was crowned Henry 
VIII of England had died. Henry VIII indeed claimed to be king 
of his people's consciences. No monarch of England or any other 
Christian land save Russia ever claimed such sway over the faith 
of his subjects. 

Yet in that century King Sigismund Augustus of Poland was 
a greater monarch than King Henry of England. The Polish mon- 
arch was the most powerful of his line, one of the most powerful 
of his time. 

He saw realms added to his realm. Under his sway the union 
with Lithuania was finally made complete. Livonia came freely 
into the unity of the Polish state before his death. If ever a king 
seemed to have power to control his people and enforce his will, 
that king was Sigismund Augustus. 

And he did control his people, and enforce his will, but not by 
trying to override religious liberty. He saw instead an intense 
demand among his people for religious liberty. He saw also how 
other European realms were splitting and burning with religious 
hatreds. 

Sigismund Augustus himself was a Christian prince, a man 
of faith and conscience. As such, he issued a proclamation, now 
350 years old, but which would be worthy of King George V or 
King Victor Emanuel in the twentieth century. When so many 
princely hearts were burning with religious intolerance, this king 
of Poland proclaimed : 

"Considering the great calamities to which the largest and most 
flourishing Christian countries have recently been exposed, because 
their kings and princes have tried to suppress the different reli- 
gious opinions which have arisen in our time, we have resolved to 
prevent these dangers from disturbing the peace and security of 
our realms, and from causing such excitement of the minds of 



64 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN POLAND ASSURED 



people as would produce a civil war, particularly as we have be- 
come convinced, by the example of other countries in which so 
much Christian blood has been shed, that such severities are not 
only useless, but even most injurious." 

This was the doctrine of a church-going king of Poland in the 
century before our American religious liberty was established by 
the Catholics of Maryland, the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the 
Baptists of Rhode Island. 

The People 
and the King 

THE KING of Poland was in this merely a representative of 
the thought of his people. In those centuries Poland saw 
both Catholics and Protestants in high places. But she did 
not see laws to compel uniform faith, or persecution for conscience 
sake. 

When Protestantism became a noticeable movement in Poland, 
in the time of Sigismund Augustus, some striking incidents showed 
the attitude of the people. For example, those who became Prot- 
estants refused to pay any tithes to the older church. They found 
that in this attitude they were warmly supported by the power of 
the Catholic nobility. 

Then the Catholic and Protestant members of the Diet, meet- 
ing in Piotrkow in 1552, worked with the king to provide the ut- 
most liberty of thought and worship. 

The result of this Diet was the establishment of a system like 
that in existence today in all civilized countries. The different 
church bodies had authority over their ecclesiastical relations to 
their own members, and there the ecclesiastical power ended. 

The Contrasts 
of the Ages 

WE WOULD take this for granted now in any country, 
civilized or uncivilized. We know that today the force 
of modern opinion is strong enough to compel religious 
toleration, as it has compelled toleration in China under the dow- 
ager empress, and in Russia under the czars. 



BY TOLERATION OF ANCIENT CONSTITUTION (x5 

But in the time of Sigismund the king could have issued very 
different edicts, if he had been disposed to persecute. The nobles 
at the Diet of Piotrkow might have passed Test Acts or other 
acts to take away the rights of the members of the minority faith, 
whatever the minority faith might prove to be. 

But one sentiment prevailed among Catholics and Protestants, 
at the very time when the issues were burning in every other land. 

When the Catholics of that period were in power they pro- 
tected the Protestants. Then came a time when Protestantism 
had a wide sweep in Poland, temporarily winning to its doctrine 
many of the most ancient and eminent families. And these Prot- 
estant families, while they were building Protestant churches and 
printing Protestant Bibles, did not neglect to protect their Catholic 
fellow-countrymen. 

Poland thus stands out in shining contrast to many lands of 
that age. She stands out in shining contrast to Prussia and Russia 
even in the last 100 years. 

Even in cities which had rejoiced at the Toleration Edicts of 
Sigismund in the sixteenth century, Catholics were persecuted in 
the nineteenth by the Kulturkampf madness of von Bismarck. In 
other cities Lithuanian Greek Catholics were forced into member- 
ship in the Russian church. Thus modern Russia and Prussia fell 
behind the Catholics and Protestants of an earlier century. 

The Land 
of Faith 

THIS ANCIENT tolerance is not the tolerance of people in- 
different to religion. Indeed, we find that some of the Polish 
kings felt that they were naturally preachers and spiritual 
advisers. Some of them even chide and admonish the bringers-in 
of new doctrines, and urge them paternally to rejoin the ancient 
church. 

For these Polish kings, especially the greatest of them, were 
religious men. Many of them have been canonized as saints. But 
their religion was one of principle, not of intolerance. 

So under Catholic kings Protestants were found, now and then, 
as presidents of the Polish Diet, as judges of courts, holding offices 
of honor and offices of trust. 



66 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN POLAND ASSURED 



The mingling of zeal and tolerance was beautifully uttered in 
a declaration by Jan Zamoyski, Crown Chancellor, showing what 
breadth of vision had made a Land of Liberty out of the Land of 
Faith. He declared to a group of separated friends : 

"If I could lead you back to Catholicism I would gladly give 
up half my life — and with the other half I should live rejoicing in 
the union. 

"But if anyone should try to compel you, then I would give up 
all my life, rather than be obliged to witness this compulsion." 

The Land 
of Refuge 

THE FAME of Poland's liberty went like spreading light 
through the dark regions where religious strife was raging. 
The result was that many tolerated sectarian leaders of 
that age found their way to the Vistula, just as friends of human 
liberty had always sought the way to Poland. 

Here were to be found, under the equal protection of the laws, 
the different schools of opinion which that era produced: Hussites, 
Lutherans, Calvinists, Arians, Secinians and others. 

The Test 
of the Ages 

NO NATION better stood the test of those times than Poland. 
And Poland, if she were asked what her pledge of religious 
liberty will be, could pledge much by merely turning to her 
history. 

But of course Poland can show more than that. Her sons and 
daughters have been scattered throughout the world. They have 
shared proudly in the achievements of liberty in every land. At 
the same time, her sons in Poland have suffered under the perse- 
cution of Prussia on one side, and the persecution of Russia on 
the other. 

When Poland and Lithuania were united, the Lithuanians were 
divided from western Christendom. This was before the Ref- 
ormation, before the day of modern religious problems. But Po- 
land preserved the religious liberties of the Lithuanians as she pre- 
served their political liberties. And there came a time when the 



BY TOLERATION OF ANCIENT CONSTITUTION 67 



Lithuanians voluntarily united themselves with the western 
churches. The Christian charity of their Polish brethren accom- 
plished what persecution would never have accomplished. 

As late as 1874 the Russian czar's church made efforts to force 
the Lithuanians into the Russian church organization. But it was 
found impossible to break the ties which tolerance had bound be- 
tween Lithuania and western Christendom. Whether Lithuania 
forms one government with Poland or not, she will always preserve 
the spirit of religious liberty which Poland secured for her in 
earlier centuries. 

The Shrine 
of Freedom 

AN EARLIER article in this series cited the recent request 
of Jewish communities in Poland for their own courts and 
the recognition of their own language. It was remarked in 
that article that these liberties were actually possessed by Jews in 
the days of Poland's independence. 

The Jews were expelled from England by Edward I in the 
year 1290. 

But in the year 1264 King Boleslaw the Pious (the name should 
be noted) had issued to the Jews of Poland proper a Charter of 
Liberties. Within the next century Casimir the Great extended 
this to all lands under the Polish dominion. 

For 500 years the charters of Boleslaw and Casimir were con- 
firmed by all the kings of Poland. The confirmation of the charter 
came as surely as the coronation itself, while from many western 
lands the Jews were barred by barbarous laws, and in others they 
endured continual rapine and persecution. 

The charter gave to the Jewish dwellers in Poland complete 
freedom of trade and transactions, and of travel. There was no 
"Jewish pale" as in modern Russia under the czars. 

The Jews, when accused, were tried by separate courts, and could 
not be brought before ordinary municipal or ecclesiastical courts. 
Indeed, the Jewish elders themselves tried all minor cases. Other 
cases were tried before officials known as "Jewish judges." These 
were never allowed to convict a Jew on exclusively Gentile testi- 
mony, and their verdicts had to be approved by the Jewish elders. 



68 RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN POLAND ASSURED 

These were the laws of the land, just as the laws for toleration 
among Christian sects were laws of the land. 

There are elements in every nation who are opposed to religious 
liberty. We know individuals in our own America who are utterly 
intolerant. And Poland also was cursed at times with the pres- 
ence of individuals who were not worthy of the grand spirit of 
her leaders. But in Poland, as in America, those were the excep- 
tions. The main volume of Polish history is unstained by the blood p 
of religious massacre, unmarred by cruel statutes or intolerance, f 

The Future : 

Freedoms 

THE POLAND of the future will turn for her inspiration to 
the grandest and highest things of her past, and. to the noblest 
principles of the present age. 

If all other lands had forgotten religious tolerance, Poland 
could restore it from the records of her old laws. But since all 
countries do now profess and proclaim religious liberty, Poland 
has only to pledge that she will maintain the present and the past 
freedom of soul of her people. 

Great is Poland. She is great because of moral greatness, 
spiritual grandeur, mightiness of soul. These qualities belong to 
the nation because it is a nation of freemen, men independent in 
spirit however oppressed by foreign rule; And therefore she will 
maintain that independence of spirit for every soul within her 
borders, when once the foreign rule is forever loosed. 

She will be a land of liberty, welcoming to her all sons of lib- 
erty, pledging freedom to all. She will not live in the past, but in 
the present. But let her past be taken as a pledge that she is able 
to fulfill the promises of the future. 



History of Polish Womanhood Shines With 
Noble Patriotic Achievements 

NEW YORK has seen grand efforts for the cause of Poland 
championed by Mme. Marcella Sembrich. 

Mme. Marcella Sembrich was born in the war-battered 
city of Lemberg. She was born with the irresistible impulse of 
the musical genius, for she played the piano and violin at four, 
and supported her family with her music when only 12. Now for 
30 years all the honor and adulation that are showered upon great 
operatic sopranos have been hers — Athens, Dresden, London, Paris, 
Kome, Milan, New York have bowed down before her. 

This might make any vocalist a mere queen of song. But all 
her successes have only developed the womanhood of Mme. Sem- 
brich. And now, after a lifetime of honors won in other lands, 
after dwelling a long time in New York, among people of English 
speech, she is found devoting strength and genius to the cause of 
her beloved Poland. 

All the prestige Mme. Sembrich has won in her long career in 
music has gone to help in raising relief funds for the battle-ridden 
peasantry of her suffering country. 

All these years the people of her own blood have rejoiced in 
her fame. The Poles are a musical nation. The humblest Polish 
settlement in the United States has its singing society and its or- 
chestra devoted to classical music. So these people know and 
appreciate the high level of art which Mme. Sembrich has reached. 

But perhaps she has never won, in a lifetime of kindness, so 
much of the love of her own kindred as in these years when 
Poland was in bitter need, and Mme. Sembrich was found devot- 
edly toiling for the people of the homeland. 

At the 
Sorbonne 

PARIS knows only one woman who was ever made a pro- 
fessor at the Sorbonne, that university which for 700 years 
has exerted tremendous influence over the public mind of 
France. 



70 HISTOKY OF POLISH WOMANHOOD SHINES 



This woman is Mme. Marie Sklodowska-Curie, daughter of a 
professor in Warsaw, born in Warsaw, but the woman who won 
enduring fame in Paris by the discovery of radium. 

Mme. Curie has won international honors in science as great 
as those won by Mme. Sembrich in music. But when the war 
burst upon the world, and upon Poland, she showed the filial loyalty 
of her heart, and became one of the first and most earnest workers 
for the relief of her suffering people. 

Many have said that art is international, and science is inter- 
national. But these women have shown that the internationalism 
of life work will not destroy patriotism or humanity or sympathy 
for the land of one's birth. 

These two feminine world-figures, before whom all civilization 
has done homage in the spheres of learning and of song, are found 
to be, after all, women of Poland as well as women of the whole 
world. 

The First 
Ambassador 

THE whole world knows how the greatest of piano virtuosi, 
Ignace Jan Paderewski, was ruined by the war. 

The whole world knows how he toured the Allied lands, 
as he said, "not to entertain, but to plead for Poland." America 
has recognized the honor given her when the Polish Committee 
in Paris named M. Paderewski as its first diplomatic representa- 
tive in America. 

Thus the master-musician came to us in a new role, as the first 
ambassador of the resurrected Polish Republic. All that is known, 
as well as the memorable eloquence with which M. Paderewski 
pleaded the cause he desired to plead. 

With M. Paderewski on his old time concert tours Mme. Pader- 
ewski often traveled. She shared the honors that came to him, 
and the glory of his applause. 

Then, when M. Paderewski appeared in his new role, as a 
worker and a toiler in the hard affairs of a formative state — as 
an advocate for a prostrated and humiliated people — Mme. Pader- 
ewski was found sharing his labor and his new anxieties, and 
serving Poland with the same zeal. 



WITH NOBLE PATRIOTIC ACHIEVEMENTS 71 



The New Poland owes much to valiant men, generals, states- 
men, professors, advocates, and men of religion. But she owes 
much also to her women, to these three and to others like them in 
high or humble spheres. 

Poland would be ungrateful indeed if she did not recognize 
these women and their work. But the world asks, What was the 
inspiration of their efforts? Does this mean that Polish women 
feel the force of the Modern Age? Is this merely modern Fem- 
inism, or have the Poles in other ages known the great help of 
great women? 



The Girls 
of America 

WE HAVE all seen in America, and all our Red Cross and 
Liberty Loan and War-Saving Stamp campaigns can re- 
port, how zealously the teams of Polish women have aided 
in these works. 

But in America we expect great results from the American 
Girl, whatever her ancestry. Whether her grandmother's girlhood 
was spent in the long winters of Russia or under the sun of Spain, 
we expect from the American girl life and fire and initiative. 

These things have been shown indeed in the American Girl 
of Polish descent. She has done more than her share in all the 
activities of the war. She has also done her extra share for the 
Polish Army fighting in France, and all the special relief work 
undertaken for Poland itself. 

For in our Polish-American communities two armies were 
raised for this war. The young men eligible to service under our 
American flag poured into the recruiting stations for that service. 
At the same time thousands of young men, not citizens, or too 
young for the American army, or too old for the American army, 
volunteered for service in the Polish army. 

Behind both these Polish armies stood and worked the Amer- 
ican women of Polish blood, from the grandmothers knitting socks 
in memory and hope, to the flower-like little children passing coin 
baskets at a bazaar. The Polish women of America did their 
quota and more for all the American relief causes. 



72 HISTORY OF POLISH WOMANHOOD SHINES 



They also sustained this second army, of kindred spirits, bound 
to fight in France under the White Eagle of the Polish Republic. 

So the Polish communities of our American cities knew of two 
kinds of farewells for soldiers. 

They saw their volunteers and draft men depart for the Amer- 
ican camps with other youths of many nationalities. They saw 
the same scenes that other nationalities witnessed on these occa- 
sions. 

They also saw the departure of volunteers for the Polish army. 
They saw the young troopers gather and march solemnly to church, 
according to the antique custom of Poland in her days of glory. 
They witnessed in church the unusual ceremony of the Itinera- 
rium for departing warriors. Then these young men went on to 
the special training camp at Niagara-on-the-Lake, to don the blue 
uniform of the Polish Army. 

And neither American army men nor Polish army men ever 
knew their kinswomen to fail them in comfort and cheer. They 
hesitated at no toil, and shrank from no weariness. The young 
American girl of Polish descent, with her liveliness and her love 
of laughter and music, went in one spirit with her knitting grand- 
mother, or with the lofty spirit of Mme. Sembrich. 

The High 
Inheritance 

THIS spirit is not one "created by the war." It is not the 
spirit of today only. 

The truth is, discernible in all the history of the past, that 
Polish womanhood has always had its share in the country's life 
work. The fire of patriotism, the devotion to the country's wel- 
fare, the cares of state, have never been matters only for the men 
of Poland, for the noblemen and the princes. 

The reason for this is the foundation of Polish society. It has 
been previously emphasized in these articles that the whole Polish 
nation was based upon the freeman and the individual home. In 
that individual home the women had their place and work — and 
hence in the larger fields of the state women might have their 
place and work, if there were things which only women could do. 



WITH NOBLE PATRIOTIC ACHIEVEMENTS 73 

St. Hedwig, the 
Twice-Crowned 

THE great Polish women of history have not been women 
forcing their way into public posts. They have been found 
chiefly in the calmer and quieter spheres. But when the call 
came to them to assume heavier and harder burdens they did not 
shrink. 

Some European kingdoms have barred women from the throne 
by the famous Salic law. This law caused bloody wars between 
France and England. But in Great Britain the right of women 
to the throne was recognized, ever since Queen Boadicea rallied 
the Briton tribes against the soldiers of Nero. 

So in the Slavic realm of Russia the power of women to rule 
was established by the early but able reign of Queen Olga in Kiev. 
And Poland found in the reign of Queen Hedwig, the Saint Jad- 
wiga of the Polish church, an era of advancement and greatness. 

A Medieval 
Ideal 

THIS* queen has been honored by the patriotism and the piety 
of her people for four centuries. And yet — just as Napoleon 
of France was not French but Corsican — just as King Richard 
I of England was not English but French — so Queen Hedwig of 
Poland was by birth not Polish but Hungarian. 

The year 1384 saw an extraordinary event in Poland. When 
Casimir the Great was dying, he wished that his nephew, Louis of 
Hungary, should be chosen king. This was done. Then Louis 
asked that his daughter Hedwig be chosen queen after his death. 
And in 1384 this Princess Hedwig was crowned with all the state 
and honor of the ancient royalty. 

This was in the midst of the Hundred Years' War between 
France and England over the Salic law. And this queen, chosen 
to the throne of a storm-girt land, was not even a grown woman. 
She was just 13 years old when, of their own free will and choice, 
the nobility of Poland called her to the throne. 

Those voting nobles were unhampered by determination to sub- 
jugate women. Their action is in every way remarkable, for Po- 




74 HISTORY OF POLISH WOMANHOOD SHINES 



land had never had a queen as sovereign. Yet all succeeding gen- 
erations of Poles have rejoiced in their extraordinary decision. 

For under Queen Hedwig took place the first union with 
Lithuania, which was the beginning of Poland's greatest era. She 
was married to Jagiello of Lithuania, and won him to the Christian 
faith. From them were descended the Jagellon dynasty of Polish 
kings — the crowned presidents of the old Polish republic. And 
when Queen Hedwig died her consort succeeded to the throne. 
Then took place the decisive struggle of that age with the Teutonic 
Knights, in which the Prussian menace of the Middle Ages was 
destroyed by the great battle of Tannenberg. 

Poland would have been far less in Europe than she became, 
if her nobles had not freely crowned this Hedwig. Partly of 
Polish blood she was, but wholly of Hungarian birth and training. 
Yet her acceptance of high responsibility, her worth and zeal for 
her people, are a cherished tradition to Pole and Lithuanian today, 
just as her renowned beauty is an inspiration to Polish artists. 

True successors of St. Hedwig the Queen are the great Polish 
omen of our time, the ardent American patriot girls of Polish 
ent among us. 

They could point back to other grand examples, such as the 
Countess Zyberk-Plater, who led one revolutionary uprising in 
Lithuania in the days of oppression. The countess, like the queen, 
was a lover of home and peace, but did not shrink when called 
to heavier tasks. 

Such are the records of Polish Womanhood, utterly womanly, 
utterly devoted, and triumphant in faithfulness. 



New Freedom in Poland Means Security for 
Large and Small Neighbor Nations 

NAPOLEON THE GREAT was an inspired prophet. 
It was Napoleon who said, "Europe will become either 
Cossack or Republican." 
, He meant that European nations would come to submit to wide 
autocracy like that of the Czars of Russia, or would unite all na- 
tions to preserve Democracy. 

This was like foretelling the issues of the Great War. 
Another saying of Napoleon has come back to the memory of 
statesmen since the Great War burst upon the world. 

He said : "The Polish Question is the key to the European 
vault." 

True when Napoleon reigned, as it had been true centuries 
before his birth — this is true now, and will be true for. our children. 

What Shall 
"Poland" Mean? 

LET us first understand what we shall mean by Poland — what 
character of nation the New Poland will be. 

It will be the nation that produced Chopin, Copernicus, 
Sienkiewicz, and thus is proved capable of men of the foremost 
order. But they are not all geniuses of art or letters or science. 
They are a body of 30,000,000 people, stalwart, sterling, modest, 
worthy. 

Their government will represent definite principles, thus laid 
down plainly and clearly before all the world by Ignace Jan Pader- 
ewski, their representative : 

"Poland will be free and so will her inhabitants, as in this 
majestic and mighty Republic of the United States. 

"The democratic Constitution of Poland will assure liberty and 
equality as to race, religion, or political opinion. 

"Catholics, Protestants and Jews will all enjoy equal rights as 
they will all fulfil equal duties. 

"There was, there is, and there will be no oppression of any 
kind in Poland!" 



76 NEW FKEEDOM IN POLAND MEANS SECURITY 

How Poland 
Won Her Place 

THE nation that upholds this standard in middle Europe can 
indeed be "the key to the European vault." 
If the Czars could have Russianized Poland they would 
have conquered Germany and ruled the Rhine from Petrograd. 

If the Kaisers could have Prussianized Poland they would have 
conquered Russia and ruled the Neva from Berlin. 

Here was the Key which Russian and Prussian tyrants sought 
to master, and which would have unlocked the vaults of treasure 
and power. 

But no Czar could turn the key, and no Kaiser could move the 
key. Poland remained, barring both their doors. 

The humble, downtrodden, meek and sad Polish people, by 
merely resisting, by merely keeping the faith, has outlived the 
imperial ambitions and the imperial houses of Romanoff and 
Hohenzollern. 

It is not by accident that Poland now stands restored among 
free peoples. It is not because of mere historical sentiment. 
Poland, during all these years of eclipse, has earned her place. 

She raised the standard of Liberty against Autocracy while 
Napoleon was still a lieutenant of artillery. She raised it again 
and again, long before Europe knew that the principles for which 
Poland fought were world-principles. 

Now she can give a truer pledge of maintaining those prin- 
ciples in the future, because she has held them firm for all these 
centuries. She can call her very oppressors from their graves to 
witness for her. And the free nations, with whom she has fought 
to the overthrowing of Kaiserism, will add their witness. 

The Eternal 
Bulwark 

THE farsighted Allies can see that Poland's future has a mean- 
ing for them. 

The Allies look on and smile while Gen. Haller takes hold 
in Danzig, and Paderewski enters Posen. 



FOB LARGE AND SMALL NEIGHBOR NATIONS 77 

These cities have been under Prussianism for generations. 
They contributed mightily to the strength of Prussia. They would 
contribute in the future to that strength, especially if a revived 
Poland sends heavy shipments down the Vistula to Danzig, and 
Danzig is still Prussian. 

But the world knows what a strong Prussia has meant. And 
what the world wants instead is a strong Poland. 

Here would be a nation between Prussia and Russia. It would 
represent neither Czarism nor Kaiserism but would stand opposed 
to both. It would represent neither Bolshevism nor the Prussian 
spirit of domination but would stand opposed to both. 

On the other hand, if Russia needed help from a strong and 
kindly neighbor, Poland would be her helper as she was in former 
centuries. And if Prussia needed guidance in the unwonted path- 
ways of democracy, Poland could be her leader as she was in 
former centuries. 

At the same time, if either Russia or Prussia submitted to re- 
action, and became again the old time autocracies, Poland would 
not fall back. She would keep the faith as in former centuries. 

Poland, enthroned in her people, would represent in eastern 
Europe the ideals of Great Britian and France and the United 
States. She would be the friend of Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, 
Ukraina, Finland, Greater Italy, Greater Greece, and of any other 
nation self-determined on independent action. 

She would be indeed the key to Europe. She would be rather 
like the gate of the Temple of Janus in Rome, which was shut in 
time of peace. She could hold fast the doors on all wars that 
threatened democracy. 

The Vaster 
Future 

THE Poles predict an early unity of the old boundaries of the 
Kingdom of Poland, with 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 inhabi- 
tants. 
But some of them have formed already a grand dream for the 
future, based on the self-determination of peoples. 

They hope for a time in the future when the Republic of Poland 
will include all of the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was 



78 NEW FREEDOM IN POLAND MEANS SECURITY 

united to Poland under the Jagellon dynasty, and remained united 
to her until the destruction of Polish liberties. 

They have hopes also for a share of their old, old territories 
in Silesia and Pomerania. 

They do not expect these additions by force and arms, but by 
self-determination of peoples. 

The Lithuanians, for example, are disturbed by a movement for 
an entirely independent Lithuania. At the same time this Gen. 
Pilsudski, Polish military dictator at Warsaw, is a Lithuanian, 
as was also the renowned Kosciuszko. Thus there is already a 
strong Lithuanian movement for unity. 

The Poles declare for self-determination. If the Lithuanians, 
the Letts, the people of Courland and Esthonia and other lands, 
wish to establish separate republics, the Polish Republic will greet 
them gladly. But the Polish Republic expects that in time these 
republics will add themselves to her, as Texas and Hawaii added 
themselves to the United States of America. 

There are other Slavic prophets who foresee an even wider and 
greater union of states. They look to the east, and see the vast 
territories inhabited by Ukrainians and Ruthenians joining them- 
selves freely to the future Great Republic. 

For in many of these provinces Polish is known everywhere, 
and spoken everywhere, and Polish music and poetry are enjoyed 
by all these nationalities. The Poles point back to former centuries 
when these different races were federated, and point to the future 
with exalted hopes. 

The Key and 
the Door 

THE peace table will look on these questions far differently 
from the way peace congresses usually look on territorial 
issues. 
At all previous peace tables it was to the interest of each gov- 
ernment to keep the other governments as weak as possible. 

This was the principle which governed even the settlement of 
the Balkan war by the Congress of London. The determination to 
repress the growing power of dangerous nations was the whole 



FOR LARGE AND SMALL NEIGHBOR NATIONS 79 

cause of the coalitions against Louis XIV, and Frederick the Great, 
and Napoleon. 

If the peace table were to consider making empires or kingdoms 
stronger in their royal dominion, the conference would wrangle 
forever. 

But this peace table has a very different duty. Its work is not 
to add to autocracies, but to democracies. And therefore it is to 
the interests of the world's peace to make each free people as 
powerful in freedom as possible. 

Living 
Again 

THEREFORE no one fears that the peace conference will 
draw the map and cast the charter for a Weak Poland. 

It will be a Great Poland again. It will be the Poland 
which dwelt peaceable among her rivers long before any of the 
latter dynasties of Europe were enthroned. It will be the Poland 
which has seen the downfall of all the royalties that oppressed her, 
and which bears witness to the truth that a Free People never dies. 

The Keys 
of Liberty 

GREAT Poland has learned many lessons since the conspiring 
tyrants rent her fair dominion to pieces. 

She has learned from her own past that she needs unity 

and co-operation. Indeed, the nobility of the old time learned 

j when it was too late that their great privileges had endangered 

| the freedom of their country. Therefore the nobility themselves 

were the first to propose, as far back as 1791, that in the Poland 

of the future their privileges should be curtailed. 

Today, it is the nobility, even the descendants of the old kingly 
families, who join with the sons of peasants to proclaim a universal 
democracy in Poland. This Gen. Pilsudski, raised to a general- 
ship because he was a political leader of a workingmen's party, 
came of a princely line. 

And what Poland has learned best is that her own service in 



80 NEW FREEDOM IN POLAND MEANS SECURITY 

this war is due to her democracy. The service of every nation that 
served humanity was due to their democracy. 

If the Poles had not remained freemen, of independent souls, 
the Russian Poles would have unitedly obeyed the Czar, and the 
Prussian Poles would have fought for the Kaiser, and all the Aus- 
trians Poles for Vienna. Not one would have fought for Poland. 
Not one would have fought for democracy. 

And Poland can look about her and realize that it was the 
democracy of Czecho- Slovakia that made the Czecho- Slovaks an 
Allied Nation even in the middle of Teutonic empires. It was 
the spirit of democracy in Serbia that enabled her to resist the 
guns of Franz- Josef. 

Turkey bowed to the lowering Teuton lords, and Turkey is 
gone — Arabia resisted, and Arabia is free. 

So Poland knows it was Democracy that saved her. Democracy 
alone can maintain her. She will keep the faith. 

"Peace 
on Earth" 

FOR the first time since King Frederick the Great of Prussia 
meditated the Great Conspiracy of the First Partition the 
bells of Christmas rang a real message of peace from Dan- 
zig to Wilna, and from Cracow to Warsaw, and from Lemberg 
to Kiev. 

Great sorrows and great wars have followed in the wake of that 
great crime. The past unveils to us the mournful sight of cities 
in flames under the ravages of Suwarrow, of Napoleon retreating 
from Moscow on the long road that led finally to Waterloo. Now 
at last, with the slowness with which humanity learns its great 
lessons, we come to understand the words of the American poet : 

"A question is never settled 
Until it is settled right." 
Now that is is settled right, it is settled forever. Self-deter- 
mination will solve all the questions which wars have created — 

All crimes shall cease, and ancient Fraud shall fail, 

Returning Justice lift aloft her scale — 

Peace o'er the world its olive wand extend, 

And white-robed Innocence from heaven descend ! 



Great Statesmen of Past and Present Agreed 
on Meaning of Polish Problem 

MUCH has been said by the wisest statesmen of our day in 
behalf of justice for Poland. 

Poland's enemies might say that this is a sentiment 
shaped in the fires of war, that it is not cool judgment but the 
passionate wrath of the democracies against the autocracy of 
Prussia. 

But the past illuminates this as it illuminates many other phases 
of the problem of Poland. 

The wise men of our day are merely repeating for us what 
the wise men of former times have said. The statesmen of today 
speak to ready audiences, while the far-sighted ones of a former 
generation spoke to deaf ears and hardened hearts. 

Great Was 
Talleyrand 

"\T OW rises before us a strange and portentous figure, called 
[^ Talleyrand, whose name was Charles Maurice de Talley- 
rand- Perigord. 

Almost superhumanly great was this man. Far from admir- 
able in soul, he was incredibly wise in the things of statecraft. 
Wherever he served he shone. Wherever honors were bestowed 
he won them. 

He first was in the church as a French abbe, then became 
Bishop of Autun, in the days before the French Revolution. In 
that Revolution he was elected a deputy to the states-general. He 
, followed a course marked by brilliant ability, but was excom- 
, municated from the church. Then under the Revolution, under 
; the Directorate, under Napoleon, under Louis XVIII, Charles X, 
j Louis Phillippe, he served in the highest and most responsible 
| posts. 

He negotiated the chief treaties of Napoleon's days of glory — 
yet he saw the danger of Napoleon's Russian and Spanish cam- 
paigns, and opposed them. He established the German Confed- 



82 GREAT STATESMEN OF PAST AND PRESENT 

eration of the Rhine, and helped to frame the Concordat between 
the Vatican and France. He brought back the Bourbon kings to 
France when Napoleon fell, and at the Congress of Vienna in 
1815 he succeeded in keeping France intact though some of Napo- 
leon's conquerers hoped to despoil her. 

Under many governments, under three dynasties, he was min- 
ister of foreign affairs and a foreign ambassador. In his own day 
everyone recognized his supreme sagacity. 

Great was Tallyrand. But he said no wiser, no truer thing, 
than when he rose from the Peace Table of the Congress of 
Vienna in 1815, and said: 

"The Poles no longer have a common country. But they have 
a common language. They will remain, then, united by the strong- 
est and most durable of all bonds. Thev will arrive, under for- 
eign domination, to the age of manhood. And the moment they 
reach that age will not be far from that in which, emancipated, 
thev will all be attached once more to one center." 

/ 

Wisdom 
Unheeded 

TALLEYRAND was not heard when he warned Napoleon not 
to invade Spain, not to invade Russia. Napoleon lived to 
declare that the invasion of Spain was the blunder of his 
career. Historians have agreed that the retreat from Moscow 
marked the irredeemable decline of Napoleon's glory. 

So the great powers which ruled over Poland, which had con- 
quered Napoleon, did not heed Talleyrand's words on the pros- 
trate kingdom. 

Prussia proposed to Prussianize Poland, Russia to Russianize, 
Austria to Austrianize. 

But Talleyrand expressed in 1815 all that the historian of 
present-day Poland could write in 1918. 

He saw, as we now see, that Poland would not stifle under 
these alien masters. She would grow ! Today we can say that 
she has grown! Her people are at the full stature of modern 
democracy. And they are still "united by the strongest and most 
durable of all bonds," the language of the statutes of Casimir, the 



AGREED ON MEANING OF POLISH PROBLEM 83 



language of the battlecries of Sobieski, of the poems of Mickie- 
wicz. 

What the great statesman, the great cold-hearted statesman of 
1815 predicted, the warm-blooded statesmen of democracy in 1918 
have affirmed. 

The Wickedest 
Folly 

THE despoilers of Poland might have expected sympathy or 
praise from the minister of the conquering Napoleon, the 
man who planned the Peace of Tilsit between Napoleon and 
the czar. 

Talleyrand was born when Poland was an unbroken unity. 
When he died Poland was a mere memory of suffering and wrong 
and blood. Here was a conquest indeed, was it not? But Talley- 
rand said, at that same Congress of Vienna : 

"The partition of Poland was worse than a crime — it was a 
folly." 

We know, of course, that no folly can be worse than a crime. 
But Tally rand judged things by their wisdom. He saw through 
all the apparent triumph of the conspirators over Poland. At the 
completest hour of triumph for Poland's enemies, he said, "It is a 
folly." 

We would say today that it was first of all a crime. But we 
know also that all crime is folly. We say of any captured burglar, 
any doomed murderer, that he was foolish. But Talleyrand said 
this of great kings and emperors when they were fresh from loot 
and rich with booty. 

Maria 
Theresa 

LET us now cite another witness, one of the old school of 
Divine Right of Monarchs. Let us think of the words of 
Maria Theresa, who ruled for 40 years over Austria, Hun- 
gary and Bohemia. It is recorded against her that she took part 
in the First Partition of Poland in 1772. 



84 GREAT STATESMEN OF PAST AND PRESENT 

Did she then rejoice in her increased dominion? Did she par- 
don herself by some argument that Poland was verging toward 
anarchy, as some defenders of Frederick the Great have asserted? 
She was wiser than most queens or most kings, was Maria Theresa, 
and her words must have weight. 

"When I have long been dead," she declared, "the consequences 
of this violation of all that until now has been deemed holy and 
just, will be experienced." 

Maria Theresa saw at last the wickedness of that conspiracy. 
She also saw the inevitable consequences. She had held her throne 
by the free rallying of her people to her support, particularly the 
nobles of Hungary. She could see that the time w r ould come when 
these Poles would not rally to the support of the Hapsburg ruler. 
Perhaps she imagined a time when a revolted Polish general of 
the Austrian forces would be in Danzig, and another in Cracow — ■ 
as at the present moment ! 

A Distant 

Kiew 

f I 1HUS spoke the arch-diplomat. Thus lamented the guilty 
queen. Now let us turn to a more distant figure, a Scottish 
philosopher who became a judge in the courts of Bombay, 
India. 

From a far distance, and with a judicial and philosophical 
mind, Sir James Mackintosh made a study of the partitions of 
Poland. He died in 1832. His words could do nothing to stop 
the fatal trespass of the czars and kaisers. But he could bring 
them to the general bar of human justice, and foreshadow their 
doom. 

This is the decision of the Philosopher judge, which reads 
strangely like a document which might have been written in 1918, 
when the world is more aroused to justice: 

"Till the first partition, the sacredness of ancient possessions, 
the right of the people to their own soil, were universally regarded 
as the guardian principles of European independence." 

What is this but the self-determination of peoples? 

Sir James continues : 



AGREED ON MEANING OF POLISH PROBLEM 85 



"These principles gained through strength from that progress 
of civilization which they protected and secured; and the viola- 
tion of them seemed to be effectually precluded by the jealousies 
of great states and the wise co-operation of the smaller commun- 
ities. 

"But in the case of Poland, a nation was robbed of its ancient 
territory without the pretense of any wrong which could justify 
war, without even those forms of war which could bestow on the 
acquisition the name of conquest. It was not an attack on the bal- 
ance. It was an attack on national independence itself. 

"No single cause has contributed so much as the partition of 
Poland to alienate mankind from ancient institutions and loosen 
their respect for established governments. . . . Philip II and 
Louis XIV often violated the law of nations ; but the spoilers of 
Poland overthrew it." 

When Justice 
Returns 

HOW natural it is that Poland shall be restored at a time 
when the world is discussing a League of Nations, to unite 
all powers in certain principles of action. 

The law of Nations would have been ruined forever by the 
kaiser. The triumph of democracy restores that law. Then the 
democratic nations naturally look back into the past, to find all 
other crimes which the House of Hohenzollern has committed 
against this law of nations. Inevitably, Poland secures restitution 
as a part of the punishment of the criminal. 

The Past 
Informs Us 

THE history of Poland, as has been said before, is a History 
Interrupted. We see the nation picking up the broken threads 
of its life. We see the nation resuming its old, old post of 
honor and responsibility as a champion of democracy. 

And likewise, we see the statesmen of Poland and other na- 
tions discuss her once more as a nation. They also resume the 
discussion as it was interrupted. 



86 GREAT STATESMEN OF PAST AND PRESENT 

The statesmanship and wisdom of former years, which the 
three emperors would not follow, no longer asks the emperors 
to follow. The emperors are dethroned, and Justice makes known 
her will in the form of commands. 

There are many opinions on some disputed issues of history, 
and one can select the opinion that pleases him. But there is only 
one opinion about the wrongs of Poland, and that opinion is here 
cited from a French diplomat, from an Austrian archduchess, and 
a British jurist. This would also be the opinion of every other 
lover of justice. 

The Simple 
Task 

THIS will do much to make easy the labor of reconstructing 
Poland. The statesmen are not planning an arbitrary, ar- 
tificial task. They propose a simple work of fundamental 
human justice. 

They know just what should be done. If they did not, they 
could learn by looking over the records of the past. 

It does not matter what the statesmen read. They may read 
the apologies and explanations offered by defenders of the con- 
spirators. They may read attacks on Poland by agents of her 
oppressors and persecutors. Or they may read the impartial words 
of outsiders. All point plainly to a simple task. It is a task which 
will almost perform itself, when once the people of the Vistula 
have been called upon to determine their own destiny. 



America's Millions of Polish Descent Take 
Pride in Four Centuries of Noblest Service 

JAN KOLNOSKI is not a name blazoned in the chronicles of 
Polish historians. This name is not recorded by the writers 
of America's story. Another distant land glories in the tra- 
dition of his achievements, and a different tongue records the 
cloudy rumors of his career. 

The history of warlike Denmark rings with the name of the 
mighty Christian the First, of the Fifteenth century. King Chris- 
tian was the founder of the royal line of Oldenburg, and reigned 
at one time over Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Schleswig, Hol- 
stein. 

In the year 1476, according to some Danish and Dutch books, 
one John of Kolno, a native of the Masovia district in Poland, 
sailed under the Danish flag from the Polish port of Dantzig. He 
crossed the Atlantic and rounded the frowning coast of Labrador. 

This was in 1476, while Columbus was dwelling in Portugal 
with his young bride and their infant son Diego. It was 15 years 
before the glorious Genoese was to make the final triumphant dis- 
covery of America. 

No one seems assured as to just what activity Columbus showed 
in those years. There are some who say he made voyages to the 
coast of Africa, others who relate that he visited Iceland. And 
none can be sure how real was the reported voyage of this John 
of Kolno, though Denmark was then an adventurous nation under 
a king of masterful enterprise. 

Yet the tradition of John of Kolno remains, thrilling with dis- 
tant fascination. For it links our American history from a time 
just before the dawn, with the history of the chivalrous medieval 
Kingdom-Republic of Poland. Though the tradition is only a tra- 
dition, it draws a new chord of sympathy between the living Amer- 
ican Republic and the Republic which was slain, but now has been 
restored to life and action. 

The Poland of 1476 was the Poland of King Casimir IV, who 
gained control of Prussia after a fourteen years' war with the 
Teutonic Knights. Thus he possessed Danzig, even as the new 
Republic of Poland will include that fair free city. 



88 America's millions of polish descent take 

The Poles of 
Colonial Days 

THOUGH Jan Kolnoski is a shadowy figure, the first brave 
settlements of white men on the Atlantic coast included Po- 
lish pioneers who were not shadows. Yet they are found, 
like John of Kolno, and like their 4,000,000 successors in America 
today, engaged in service. 

In the seventeenth century another link is found to unite Amer- 
ica and Poland. Old Poland took pride that her nation formed 
the first national commission on education in the world, and is en- 
riched by some of the oldest universities in Europe. In the year 
1659 Dutch pioneers on Manhattan island employed a school 
teacher, and that teacher was a Pole. 

Three years later there came to New Jersey one Albert Zabo- 
rowski. He was a man trusted by whites and natives, and his 
name is entered as that of an official interpreter. Pie inherited 
some fine talents, for in his veins was the blood of King John 
Sobieski of Poland, the deliverer of Europe. 

From this Albert Zaborowski came descendants worthy of his 
illustrous ancestry, worthy of the old republic of Poland and the 
new republic of the United States. Chancellor Zabriskie of New 
Jersey, Dean George Gray of Harvard are descendants of this 
Polish freeman. And there are strains of the same fine blood, 
according to Miss Emily Green Balch of Wellesley, in the Amer- 
ican families of Astor, Bayard, Jay, Morrison and Gouverneur 
Morris. 

Advance Posts 
of Liberty 

VIRGINIA, New Jersey and other states have colonial Polish 
records. 

The whole of our middle west, in the days of Queen 
Anne's war, is touched by the memory of the Sodowski family. 
A descendant, James Sodowski, made one of the first settlements 
in Kentucky in 1774. His brother, Jacob Sodowski, was the first 
pioneer, after the French explorers, to go down the Ohio and 
Mississippi to New Orleans. 



PRIDE IN FOUR CENTURIES OF NOBLEST SERVICE 89 



Some say Sandusky in Ohio is named after the Sodowskis. 
Their lives bring us close to the eve of the Revolution. This re- 
calls again the valiant figures of Kosciuszko and Pulaski, and the 
historian Niemcewicz, who wrote a Polish life of Washington as 
an inspiration to the lovers of liberty in Poland. 

The Earliest 
Refugees 

THUS Poland in her days of freedom and in her days of par- 
tial freedom sent her sons to serve this land. 

From the first days until now the Poles have never been 
exploiters, nor great amassers of wealth. Ignace Jan Paderewski 
was able to make the startling statement that among 4,000,000 
Poles in America there is not one millionaire. 

The sons of Free Poland or Imperial Poland crossed the ocean 
to serve us. But after Poland lost her liberty came a new type of 
men, asking a shelter, illustrious refugees from the Revolution 
of 1831. 

These early pioneers endured privation. Men of noble birth 
or professional life worked as street laborers in New York. At 
last Congress granted them lands in the west, not wholly unlike 
their lost land of rivers and farms. There they merged one by 
one into the American Nation. 

All Faiths 
in Harmony 

SOME illuminating facts shine out in the early records. In the 
fifties the first Poles settled in Texas, and a few years after- 
ward in Wisconsin and Michigan. 

In 1863, subscriptions were raised in New York for the Revo- 
lution then raging. Among the subscribers, according to a Polish 
newspaper of that early day, were Poles of the faith of John 
Sobieski, and "Poles of the faith of Moses." 

These men "of the faith of Moses" were thought of as Poles as 
well as Jews. The Polish people do not forget to this day the 
noble share the Jews of their country have had in the struggles 
for liberty. 



90 America's millions of polish descent take 

Polish patriots of all faiths honor the memory of Colonel Berek 
Joselowicz, who raised a Jewish regiment under Kosciuszko, a 
regiment which fully shared the glory of that valiant struggle. 

To this day Polish-Americans recognize and offer honors to 
all men of true Polish-American feeling. On the board of direc- 
tors of the Polish National Alliance, the strongest of American 
Polish organizations, sits Mr. X. Zlotnicki, a Polish American citi- 
zen of the Jewish faith. 

These ancient and modern facts demonstrate the harmony which 
the historic liberty of Poland makes possible between all faiths. 

This the New Poland pledges herself to establish between faith- 
ful men of all religions. 

Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Trinitarians and 
Unitarians, are found in all the great records of Poland's past. 

They are found together in all her sad and bloody pages of 
battle. 

They are found together in the councils of New Poland. 

They were found together even among the American pioneers 
— Polish Catholics and Polish Jews in New York, and a colony of 
Polish Protestants along the Raritan River. 

The Great 
Migration 

THIS same spirit was voiced by John F. Smulski of Chicago, 
president of the National Polish department, in an address 
in 1918, when he said : 
"Our cause is too great for petty dissensions. It is too 
SACRED by reason of the blood shed by the boys in the Polish 
and the American armies in France !" 

Mr. Smulski speaks today not for a few people of Polish 
descent, the children of the few lonely pioneers of the early Amer- 
ican centuries. For today we stand on the other side of the Great 
Polish Migration, which saw thousands of Polish men and women 
issuing forth from 1870 to 1910, to many lands throughout the 
world. 

And when the all Polish convention of America met in Detroit 
in August, Ignace Jan Paderewski was able to declare: "The 



PRIDE IN FOUR CENTURIES OF NOBLEST SERVICE 91 



Poles in America are more numerous than the Norwegians in Nor- 
way, the Danes in Denmark, the Swedes in Sweden, the Serbs in 
Serbia, or the Belgians in Belgium!" 

Then M. Paderewski showed how still the spirit of service to 
this country reigns in the hearts of these Four Million. Polish 
miners in Philadelphia subscribed $11,000,000 to one Liberty Loan. 
The Polish casualty lists are three times the proportion of the na- 
tionality in the country, because the Polish volunteers outnumbered 
all others and their exemption pleas under the draft law were the 
fewest in proportion. 

The blood and treasure of these 4,000,000 Poles have been 
poured out like water. It is their pride that the first American to 
die in France was a Polish-American. It was their glory to see 
the representative Polish-Americans on the side of the Allies even 
before Germany forced this nation into the war. But in the great 
record of the 350,000 Polish- Americans in the army and navy, in 
the great record of the home support for the Liberty Loan and 
the Red Cross and all other war activities, the 4 ; 000,000 Americans 
of Polish blood have merely fulfilled the purpose of their lives, a 
purpose of service to their country, the United States. 

New Books 
for Old 

BOOKS on the new immigration, written before the war, dis- 
cussed the future Americanism of different European na- 
tionalities as "a problem." It has long been remarked that 
Polish-Americans now inhabit great farm sections of classic New 
England, as well as Pennsylvania mountain regions, Texas 
prairies, and both farms and great cities in the Middle West. 

There are perhaps one thousand cities and villages in the United 
States which are inhabited chiefly by Americans of Polish blood. 
These also were discussed as "a problem." 

But there is no longer a problem. The war has proved it. Not 
even in the days of 1776 was there a more thrilling response of 
patriotism through the New England farmlands than came from 
the Polish-Americans of New England in 1917. 

Pennsylvania saw no greater patriotism in the days of Inde- 
pendence Hall and the Declaration of Independence than her Po- 
lish communities showed. ; 



92 America's millions of polish descent take 



Texas knows red-blooded Americanism from the fiery days of 
Gen. Houston, and she saw it again in the descendants of the Polish 
pioneers of the fifties. 

Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and other old fortress towns, 
scarred by Indian wars, saw her Polish-Americans rally to the 
trumpet call as the old blockhouse defenders rallied when the sav- 
ages were at the doors. 

Every Polish community in the United States was another 
fortress of strength for this republic. Every Polish community 
poured forth beloved sons and brothers, poured out treasure of 
hard-earned savings. 

As the Fathers 
Fought 

THIS they did for America. These young inheritors of de- 

1830 exiles fought in the Civil war, as their brothers fought 

mocracy marched forth to fight as the descendants of the 
in the Spanish war. 

They marched forth to strengthen America, to strengthen De- 
mocracy, to die if need be that America and Democracy might 
live. And by strengthening America and France and Great Britain 
and all Democracy, they accomplished the holy dream of their 
fathers, and strengthened the Polish Democracy to cast off all the 
nightmare of prolonged oppression! 

Americanism 
in Action 

THE spirit of the American soldiers of every nationality is 
still the spirit of all patriots. And the spirit of all patriotism 
is what moved the National Polish Department in all its work 
for the New Poland, the Free Poland. 

The American National Polish Department consists of Amer- 
icans, working as Americans. They have no divided loyalty, but 
are true to America and humanity. They realize that the up- 
building of a strong Democracy in Eastern Europe is a great aid 
to America, and the extension of American ideals of freedom 
throughout the world. 



PRIDE IN FOUR CENTURIES OF NOBLEST SERVICE 93 

These Americans of Polish blood, represented in the Polish 
National Department and all loyal organizations of Polish democ- 
racy, see no strange and alien land yonder. They see a grand soil 
for the replanting of these American ideals of liberty. They see 
a new, noble, powerful nation arising as a new guardian of the 
human race, a new guarantor of world co-operation. 

Poland's past glories cannot be fully told in many books. Her 
present needs cannot be recounted in many words. 

We see the Polish-American organizations, before the burden 
of war was lifted, pledging themselves to raise $10,000,000 for the 
aid of the Polish Republic. 

We hear now new appeals from Poland, the Great Land of 
Suffering and Need, the greatest and the least-relieved sufferer 
from the war's ravages. And we see Americans of Polish descent 
rushing to this work as if they had not already toiled for four 
years for the Allies. 

But they do all these things, for Poland and for humanity, as 
Americans. It has been the grand and pathetic destiny of the 
Poles to serve and to suffer. It is the grand destiny of America 
to serve and to triumph. The descendants of many generations 
of suffering servants of humanity now share rejoicingly in the 
Service Triumphant. 



New Poland Pledges Her Record of Honor to 
Maintain World- Liberty Safe Forever 

TODAY the Sister Democracies of the world are gazing toward 
the Future with eager and expectant eyes. 

They see new advances of Liberty, coming swiftly like 
a tropical dawn. 

Each one of the Free Nations, from the vast and powerful 
United States to the tiny and true republic of San Marino in Italy, 
rejoices in hopes for the future. 

And each one has also made some pledges to the future of 
humanity, from imperial Great Britain in the midst of the oceans 
to Free Arabia in the midst of the desert. 

Before the Peace Congress adjourns we shall know all that each 
nation asks for its future. 

We shall know of ancient freeholds that must be restored to 
robbed republics, as Alsace-Lorraine must be restored to France. 
We shall know of nations, divided by tyrants' swords, who must 
be reunited, as the divided races of Czecho-Slovakia. 

But we shall also hear what each free nation promises her 
Sister Democracies. What pledge will each make for the future 
of peace and of liberty? 

Each in its own tongue will naturally pledge individual free- 
dom, and religious liberty, and education, and faithfulness to 
treaties. Each will show that it is prepared for a new rivalry 
among nations, a rivalry of Enlightenment. 

Among those Sister Democracies Poland will appear, like a 
country released from prison, delivered from slavery. 

Poland, too, will ask many things from the united powers of 
democracy. She will claim long-delayed justice. She has suffered 
every wrong, every robbery. She has not lost her national life — 
but she has been left as one dead. 

So Poland will make her claims. But she, too, will make her 
pledges. -- 

She will promise what she will do for her own people, those of 
Polish and alien blood, those of all races and all faiths who may 
take residence within her liberated borders. 



96 NEW POLAND PLEDGES HER RECORD OF HONOR 

The Untarnished 
Honor 

THE United States of Poland can first of all claim the right 
to be believed. Though she has been almost a dead nation, 
she has never been a dishonored one. Though she had great 
victories and great defeats, she has been neither a tyrant nor a 
poltroon. 

She must point back behind the cloud of 130 years of oppres- 
sion, and say, "I will maintain the ideals I then maintained, and 
will uphold all the enlightenment which these 130 years have 
brought to humanity!" 

She does not have to turn back and explain any violated treaties, 
for she did not violate treaties. Her people can therefore look to 
have the confidence of the free peoples of the earth. 

Poland has not had to explain any history of protracted reli- 
gious persecutions, because she was not guilty of them. 

Poland has not had to explain any oppression of weaker na- 
tions, for she added new provinces to herself as provinces of free- 
men. 

She can answer today any enemy that might arise, whether it 
were the Russian Czar or the German Kaiser or the Austrian 
Kaiser. She can meet any attack from discomfited enemies by 
pointing calmly to her record of centuries. 

In ages of oppression, when Poland was victorious, she did not 
oppress. Then no land will be freer than Poland in an age when 
all the world is free. 

In ages of persecution, when religious controversies arose, 
Poland did not persecute. Then no land will have larger liberty 
of thought and opinion in the days when all the world is a world of 
liberty. 

Keeping 
the Faith 



w 



HEN Poland had power and wealth, so that emperors 
courted her kings, and kings sought the friendship even of 
Poland's noblemen, Poland led in the march of liberty. 
When Poland had great armies they marched to free oppressed 



TO MAINTAIN WORLD-LIBERTY SAFE FOREVER 97 

cities from the Teutonic Knights. Or they marched to save Russia 
from Tartar tyrants. Or they hastened to deliver Vienna from 
the almost-triumphant Turk. She fought for liberty for a thou- 
sand years. 

And after Poland was dismembered, her sons still rallied armies 
— to fight again for liberty. 

Through all these generations of sorrow the whole nation, 
silently or in armed ranks, has been fighting for liberty. Fighting 
with prayers, fighting with books, fighting with political organiza- 
tions, they battled up to the breaking out of the Great War and 
all through the Great War for the ideals of their fathers. 

A nation that has kept the faith of democracy like this will 
keep it forever. A people which has remained a people of free- 
dom under the blighting reign of Czars and Kaisers will teach 
more freedom to the world under her own President. 

It is a New Republic that now forms yonder — but an Old Na- 
tion. It is the same nation of freemen that dwelt serenely upon 
the Vistula centuries before the German settled near Berlin, and 
many centuries before the foundations of Petrograd were laid in 
the swamps of the Neva. 

And now she is free — for what? Free merely to realize the 
ideals that have kept her alive. Free merely to fulfill the old lib- 
erties of Poland, and enrich them with all the new freedom of 
the Golden Age of Democracy. 

What Poland 
Will Give 

WE KNOW that the Great Britain of the future will build 
on her ancient freedom a nobler edifice of human liberty. 
We know that the United States is like a nation re-born 
to gigantic strength, determined to realize with grander enterprise 
all that the future has for a fearless and chainless people. 

So it will be with France, and Italy, and Brazil, and Palestine, 
and all the others, each in its own sphere. So will it be with the 
United States of Poland. 

Poland is today the Land of Thanksgiving — the Land of Grati- 
tude — the Land of Loyalty. She will indeed repay all Humanity 



98 NEW POLAND PLEDGES HER RECORD OF HONOR 



for what the nations which saved Humanity have done for Po- 
land. 

We shall see a Poland full of schools, inheriting and again be- 
queathing the cream of the ancient Polish culture, with all that 
world-culture which is shared today by enlightened peoples. 

Poland, in distant centuries, before the telescope was invented, 
produced a Copernicus, the founder of modern astronomy, who 
discovered the great secrets of the solar system. Then, in the 
future, when Poland has her own system of universal education, 
what great world-minds of coming ages will have their first nur- 
ture in those schools? 

Poland, under the blighting rule of Russia, produced in our 
own time a Mme. Curie in science, a Paderewski in music, a Sien- 
kiewicz in letters. 

When Poland is free, when her own ancient universities are 
untrammeled and her sons of genius need not flee abroad, what 
wonderful men and women will such a people produce ! 

The greater and better world of the future cannot have too 
much music, and art, and literature, too much of the lofty and 
ideal. Poland has furnished these to the world in centuries of 
sorrow. She will give the world untold treasures in centuries of 

joy- 

Poland 
Delivered 

POLAND is not living in the past. But the greatness of her 
past sustains her. 

She asks of her Sister Democracies co-operation and 
unity of spirit. She gives them co-operation and unity of spirit. 

Every enlightenment gained by any nation will be recognized 
by the New Poland, and every advance she makes in the march of 
humanity will be used to help all humanity forward. 

She must ask of more powerful and more fortunate states the 
support of their strength. This is for the cause of all humanity. 
For if Poland is not sustained, new autocracies led by Czars or 
Kaisers or Anarchists, may again rise up in Eastern Europe. 

And in return Poland pledges to all humanity — Service. For 
if Humanity is not served constantly by every Free Nation, if all 



TO MAINTAIN WORLD-LIBERTY SAFE FOREVER 99 



the Free Nations do not forever faithfully serve one another, 
Freedom itself may perish. 

The Victory 
of the Ages 

HOW America rejoiced that the war of 20 months was won! 
How Britain and France rejoiced that the war of more 
than four years was won ! And how these nations have 
pledged themselves to greater liberty and larger achievements ! 

But Poland can rejoice that a struggle for liberty of nearly 
150 years has been won! She can rejoice, indeed, that battles be- 
tween Polish freedom and Teutonic tyranny which date back for 
nearly 10 centuries have finally ended in the triumph of right. 

And Poland will be worthy of the victory of the ages, like 
Bohemia, and Armenia, and that ancient and regenerated land of 
Palestine. All these, like all these modern powers of America and 
France and Britain and Italy, have suffered together, and have 
gained a common treasure of deliverance. 

Vistula to 
Mississippi 

THE future aims of Poland are only what the past aims of 
her patriots have been. 

For these things the descendants of the old Polish patriots 
in all parts of the world have been fighting. 

Every generation fighting for liberty in every land has seen its 
Polish volunteers joining the great cause. So in all lands of the 
world Poles marched to help win the war for the new cause of 
France and Belgium and America, the old cause of Poland. 

This is why French citizens, though of Polish descent, could 
aid Poland, and felt that in fighting for France they were fighting 
for their kingdom on the Vistula. They knew that a great free 
republic beyond Germany would strengthen French liberty and all 
liberty. 

France was and is the country of these French Poles. But 
their love of liberty was Polish, and they wished to see Poland 
free as well as France, and Belgium, and distant Palestine. 



100 NEW POLAND PLEDGES HER RECORD OF HONOR 

And because of the deathless Polish ideals, the 4,000,000 Amer- 
icans of Polish descent have helped to serve their country, the 
United States, whenever they have been able to champion the cause 
of Poland. 

They have seen that a victory for Democracy anywhere is a 
victory for this nation. They have seen that the firm establish- 
ment of democracy anywhere establishes more firmly our Amer- 
ican democracy. The building up of a powerful Polish republic 
yonder strengthens every republic, and strengthens ours. 

The Fusion of 
the War 

THE fires of the war have strangely welded the peoples in. 
one Federation of Humanity. There is one spirit expresse 
in many tongues. 

This is the result of the Common Cause, defended in a Com- 
mon Peril, upheld through Common Suffering, sustained in world 
wide battles to the consummation of the Common Victory. 

And now all nations of freemen face victorious the Commo 
Future. We are still fused into one — yet each nation is self-de- 
termined, each nation chose its place. 

The wide ranks and files of the Free People blend into 01 
across the world, as they were merged in the trenches and fleets 
Americans, British, French, Belgians, Italians, Serbians, Czechs 
Poles — and all the others. Thus in one spirit they faced war w' 
all its horrors. Thus in one spirit they wait the blessings of pea 

Then, if anyone asks, Where stands Poland? Poland stan 
with France and Great Britain and the United States and T 
and all the others, and advances with all the rejoicing democr 
toward the brightness of Liberty's morning. She whose so 
often blest the nations with deliverance, now has received 
blessing back a thousand fold. And she advances toward 
brightness of Liberty's morning, with her 30,000,000 people join*, 
in the world-wide brotherhood of freemen, guided as ever by the 
eternal Fatherhood of God. 



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